This Is How The Movie Should Have Gone After I Shrunk The Kids (But It WouldHave Been Very Short)By Juxton"Have you worked the bugs out yet, dad?" asked Nick as he examined a splatter ofexploded apple on the wall as if it were a piece of artwork.
Wayne Szalinsky looked up from his soldering in surprise. "Nick! I didn't hearyou come in. OW!!" he shouted as he absent-mindedly burned his thumb with thesoldering iron. He put it in his mouth, sucking on it....his thumb, not thesoldering iron. He's not that absent-minded...really....
There was a long silence. Nick waited patiently. After a moment, Wayne looked upagain. "Did you say something?"Nick smiled. "I just asked if you'd worked the bugs out? I'm really lookingforward to trying this thing out.""Oh!" Wayne suddenly grew solemn. "Not yet. So far I just have a very large,very expensive applesauce maker.""Neat. But maybe it has something to do with that utterly pointless laser thatshoots through that pointless lens on the side and seems to drastically heat upthe ray," Nick pontificated.
Wayne thought about this for a moment, looking at the aforementioned lens.
"Hmm...nah, it's a useful plot point. Without it, the audience wouldn't considerme a pathetic, scatter-brained mad scientist that accidentally bungles upongreat discoveries without knowing much about what he's doing. Besides, the waythe lens refracts the laser and causes it to heat up to a much higher andultimately more damaging temperature looks spectacularly cool!""Good point, dad," Nick smiles broadly, pushing up his glasses. Szalinsky pusheshis own glasses up, himself smiling, and ruffles Nick's hair. "Now what do yousay we try blowing up a few more apples without making any real progress in ourquest to solve the apple-blowing-up-thingy? Ow!" he burns himself with the ironagain, looks at it, frowning, and thoughtlessly shoves it into his pocket. "Ow!Now Nick, OW!, take this apple, OW!, and put it, OW!, onto the stool, OW!""Take the soldering iron out of your pocket, dad.""Okay. Ow!" he grabs it by the hot end and just tosses it on the table. grabs anapple, he hops gleefully over to the apple-spattered stool (almost slipping andfalling onto his backside in apple remains), and places it there. "Man, we suredo spend a lot on apples," he thinks to himself. Professor Szalinsky is aimingthe giant ray at his son's back. Nick turns around, sees the little red dot onhis shirt marking where the ray will shoot, and steps to one side, shaking hishead. "Okay, Nicky, lets see if my soldering did any good.""What did you solder together, dad?""I don't know. Just a couple of wires I found on the floor. They're lying overthere on the table."Nick nods. "Neat.""Here, Nicky. Put these goggles on. They'll protect you from being blinded bythe inevitable flying appleseeds.""Neat.""Stop saying that.""'K.""Ready? Here goes." He pushes a button, causing a lot of humming, some rumbling,and quite a bit of steam to come off of the ray-gun. "Dad's right," Nick thinks.
"That pointless laser is going to look really NEAT in all that steam.""Stop saying that.""Sorry.....Neat! You read my thoughts!""Nicky!" then, a perfectly timed baseball came crashing through the windowbehind the gun, ricocheted off of several expensive and highly sensitive piecesof equipment and causing a lot of damage but at the same time somehow not enoughdamage to prevent the machine from working the way it should, and landed in thepointless lens just in time to block the pointless laser from being refractedinto a much higher and ultimately more damaging temperature. Luckily, however,this caused the baseball to start burning and shaking which provided more smokeand it was still a cool effect, though not as spectacularly cool had the ballnot been there. At the sound of the baseball making its entrance, Nick and Prof.
Szalinsky dodged away in fear, and unfortunately for them but fortunately forour readers directly into the path of the oncoming ray, which they discoveredwas by far a cooler looking effect than that dinky little pointless red laser.
As the beam struck them, they instantly shrank out of sight. Wayne felt dizzyand disoriented, but immediately understood what was going on.
"Oh no! We were exploded into little pieces by that stupid red laser!" Well,maybe understood what was going on was the wrong choice of words.
"No we didn't, dad. The machine worked. We've been shrunk to...well...I'd say1/4th of an inch tall.""How do you know that?""Because we're standing next to a ruler conveniently placed here for the benefitof the audience.""Oh. Neat.""Hey!""Sorry, Nicky." Wayne looks around him, then up at the ray gun. "Well that'sweird.""What?""I thought I was building a teleportation ray.""Oh." For the purposes of moving the story along, they suddenly began to hearand feel a loud booming noise, followed by an ungodly roar. They covered theirears and looked toward the source of the sound: the attic door. With a greatrush of wind, the door opened, and in stepped a giant version of Amy Szalinsky,Wayne's daughter and Nick's sister. She had on her usual attire of a shirt andblue jeans with tennis shoes. We'll make them white Nikes since we don't knowwhat she actually wore. "Wow! She must be...." Nick did some calculating in hishead while this author did it on his calculator and most likely got it wrong,"...let's see, subtract the 1, carry the 12, divide by .22348, Wow! 1560 feettall.""If you say so, Nicky, I don't know. Don't they have a website that does thatfor you?""Yeah, but I forget the url.""Ah. Should we get her attention?""Well, dad, at our size I calculate our chances to be about 1560 to 1/4 againstus and the chances of our meeting a horrible and gruesome death beneath hershoes very likely, but what the hay."Off they ran, waving and shouting at the tops of their lungs, toward thetowering blond who was at that moment scanning the attic trying to figure outwhat had caused that loud crashing sound. "That's strange," Amy said, "Dad onlyleaves the machine running when he wants it to randomly point at anything thatenters the room and blow it up. Wonder why it's running now." She continued tomove further into the room, regardless of the ray randomly pointing at things inthe room and shrinking them out of sight, which she chose to ignore since theyweren't blowing up like they usually did. Nick, being younger and thus havingmore energy than his dad, had sprinted well ahead of his old man and was fastapproaching Amy who was in turn fast approaching him, though she didn't realizeit. With at least a little apprehension as his giant sister's shadow fell overhim, Nick stopped in his tracks and simply stared up at her. She was absolutelycolossal. Her white shoes seemed to stretch up forever, and then her blue-jeanclad legs took over, stretching up another forever where they met her whiteshirt, which didn't quite stretch up forever since her body was shorter than herlegs, and then to her gigantic but seemingly small, because of the 2 and notquite a 3rd forevers from Nick, face. Nick noticed with even more apprehensionthat her face was not looking anywhere near him, and in fact was staringuninterestedly at the various objects around the room which kept shrinking forsome unknown yet spectactularly cool looking reason. And, she was still walkingtoward him with great, booming, fast steps.
"Not neat," Nick muttered, his jaw hanging slack and drool beginning to dribbleover his lip. He didn't even move, but did soil himself, as Amy's enormous rightsneaker lifted up, then over, then down upon him. "I hate being right," Nickwhispered, staring up at his sister's dirty shoe-sole and noticing the smallpebbles, bits of some matter that might be used gum, and perhaps even part of aninsect smashed into the tread while we're adding to the fantasy. And then Nickmet Nike (c'mon, you know I had to say it).
Wayne stopped dead, but not as dead as his son. He watched in slow realizationas his daughter's foot covered the minuscule form of Nick so quickly that itdefied comprehension. Luckily, the crunch and splatter of his son's death wasdrowned out by the loud, earth-shaking boom created by Amy's step. "Wow. GuessNicky was right about the waving and shouting thing. Now, where was I? Oh yeah.
AMY!!!" Wayne resumes waving and shouting. Lucky for Prof. Szalinksy, Amy hadstopped moving as soon as she stepped on Nick. Of course she hadn't noticedstepping on anything, but she had just decided that was a good place tostop...right in the middle of the attic floor....right in the perfect line offire for the shrink-ray. Wayne ran up to his daughter's toe and began poundingon the rubber of her shoe-sole.
"AMY! AMY, IT'S YOUR FATHER! LOOK DOWN HERE!" Amy didn't look down, but she didshrink down as soon as the ray finally settled upon her. Suddenly she foundherself standing a few feet away from her dad, who was for some reason poundinghis fists in the air and shouting while looking up at the ceiling.
"Hi, daddy," she said. Her dad kept shouting something about her looking down,so she did. "Hi, Nicky." flattened brother said nothing. A puzzled look cameover Amy's face. "You don't look so good, bro. Something wrong? Daddy, what'swrong with Nicky?"Wayne stopped shouting and looked in surprise at his daughter. "Amy? Oh, hi.
What? Nick? Um, you stepped on him, honey.""Huh?""My teleportation ray shrunk me and Nick and you stepped on him like a bug.""Weren't you building a bread slicing machine?""What?"Amy looked back down at Nick's corpse. "A bug, huh? I stepped on him?" She thengiggles and toyingly scrapes the toe of her shoe on Nick's flat face, poking athis smashed glasses. "Well, I always thought those glasses made him look kindalike a bug. Wish I could do that to those two annoying boys next door." Boththen heard some more loud booming noises and rumbling sounds. They looked at theattic door and saw Mrs. Szalinsky come pounding into the room dressed much likeher daughter, but she was wearing brown loafers and a corduroy jacket along withher shirt and jeans. Very stylish...uh, sure.
"Look, Amy, it's mom. Let's run at her while waving our arms and shouting.""Does that work?""Nick didn't think so, but nothing's been proven so far." Amy decided to justwatch to see if it did work.
Mrs. Szalinsky knew what had happened as soon as she walked into the attic andsaw the ray-gun pointing randomly around the room. "Guess Wayne finally got hisgiant balloon inflater to work.""IT'S A TELEPORTATION RAY!" shouted Wayne.
"Are you sure it's not a bread slicer?" asked Amy.
"Ew! A bug!" cried Mrs. Szalinksy, and instinctively lifted her right foot andstomped on her shrunken husband. She gave him a few twists, smirking insatisfaction, then admired her handiwork. Amy stared at the squashed remains ofher dad, watching as they first stretched out, being partially stuck on hermother's sole, then snapped back into place. "Bummer," she said, then her facescrewed up in concentration. "Hey, wait a minute! That's not a bread slicer!"She ran over to the Wayne-splotch. "Daddy! You invented a shrink ray, didn'tyou?" And then she heard a roar above her.
"Ew! Another bug!" Amy looked up to see her mother lifting her huge ked up andover her. Fortunately for Amy, unfortunately for the rest of the world, andagain fortunately for the audience, the shrink-ray took that moment to center onMrs. Szalinsky, and another perfectly-timed baseball took the same moment tocome crashing through another pane of glass, ricochet off of some more expensiveand delicate equipment, hit a precise sequence of numbers and letters on themachine's keyboard, pause a moment to press the backspace and correct an error,bounced off the enter key, then fell uselessly to the floor. Anothernot-so-spectacularly-cool-looking-since-we've-seen-it-several-times-before rayof...uh, ray shot from the machine and hit Mrs. Szalinsky in the chest, throwingher off balance and thus saving Amy's life.
"Oh no!" she thought, "I'm going to be inflated and I'm not a balloon." And shebegan to feel a rising sensation as the room shrank around her. Amy watched allthis happen, and when her mother began to grow, she herself grew confused again.
"Darn, guess I was wrong both times. It's not a bread slicer and it's not ashrink ray. Hmmm....Ah!...no....Is it a washing machine? No...."And now we shall leave her to ponder the nature of the machine. We last see herbending over her father's remains in an attempt to get the answer from him.
And what about the sequel Honey I Didn't Blow Up The Kid But I Blew You Up ButReally I Didn't Even Do That Since Right Now I'm Just A Stain On The Bottom OfYour Shoe And It Doesn't Matter Anyway Because It Was Supposed To Be ATeleportation Ray In The First Place?
