Practical Effects - Chapter 4 - FINALE

Wasn't the last part already marked as the finale—nope! never happened don't know what you're talking about!!

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I paced back and forth across the living room, feeling a little more anxious with each look at the clock. I could text her again, point out how late we were running… But why? Megan was going to move at her own pace. Why wouldn’t she? Every single person in her life bent to her whims.

Me included.

So, instead, I adjusted my tux and grabbed the remote, hoping the TV could distract me from how late we were running.

“...Newest reports confirm that Megan Lambert is now over one hundred feet tall,” the newscaster said, “nearly double the size of her character in her upcoming film—”

Click.

“Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!” Megan proclaimed in rerun footage. The camera zoomed out from her face to reveal that she was holding an entire sound stage like it was a toy model, the cast all riding on it.

Click.

“Congressional hearings regarding Megan Lambert continued today on Capitol Hill, with experts testifying that if her alarming rate of growth continues, providing her with basic necessities will constitute the majority of global economic activity by 2040.”

Click.

“Oh, this was such a blast to work on,” Megan said as she sipped at a mug the size of a swimming pool. “Everyone was so accommodating on set, the director was very supportive and really helped me navigate my first time as an actor.”

Click.

“We don’t understand how Megan Lambert is alive. Her blood vessels should be too wide for capillary action to function properly. Her neural pathways should be too long for her brain’s electrical signals to fire at the appropriate speeds. Her body ought to be tearing itself apart under its own weight. Even those afflicted with gigantism, which causes them to grow only a few feet taller than the norm, frequently experience health problems associated with their size. There is not a doctor or physicist on this planet that can account for the fact that Ms. Lambert is not only alive but thriving, and until we can explain how her body works, we have no choice but to assume that her growth is going to continue indefinitely.”

I turned the TV off and sagged forward, rubbing my temple. I just sat there like that until I heard the booming sound of a thousand-pound metal latch moving.

My personal suite, like every piece of the Lambert compound, was a miraculous feat of architecture and engineering. Megan sold the apartment building a while ago; it was still taller than her, for the time being anyway, but it no longer had enough lateral space for her to be comfortable in. Instead, she now lived in the single biggest residential building ever constructed. From Megan’s perspective, it was a large ranch-style house, big but not absurdly so. It had a large kitchen, two sitting rooms, and a handful of bedrooms, all on one floor; there was just no designing a second-story floor that Megan’s weight wouldn’t punch straight through.

The house had almost a fractal design to it. Every “countertop” was a plane of sidewalks and railways, every cubby and crevice held offices, homes, and factories. The entire building operated like a small city, housing a 4-digit population that was all dedicated to one thing and one thing only: maintaining Megan Lambert’s image and lifestyle. In place of a stovetop was row after row of human-scaled cooking stations where a squadron of personal cooks prepped her meals. The attic housed hundreds of HVAC technicians, construction workers, and electrical specialists who worked around the clock to maintain the facilities.

And in Megan’s bedroom, what looked from the outside like a jewelry box was, in fact, my personal quarters, a two-story condo with a rooftop set up on hinges, hinges which now bellowed as my ceiling shook, rising away to reveal the 15-foot-tall face of my girlfriend, the world’s biggest celebrity—ha ha.

“I am so sorry, I know how late we’re running,” Megan boomed. I felt her voice vibrating in my skeleton. I didn’t bother responding; she wouldn’t be able to hear me until she’d put me in position.

And besides, I was too overwhelmed. There was no getting used to the sight of Megan these days. No matter how much time you spent around her, no matter how long you stared up at her, your brain just refused to accept that something so huge could move so fluidly, so… humanly. She was beautiful, sure, but she was beautiful back when she was smaller than I was. What she was now, I’m not sure we have a word for. Deific? Sublime? It was like… if you watched her for too long, thought about her for too long, you could feel your brain start to unravel. Her very existence stood in opposition to everything you understood about the world. Nothing made sense when you looked at her.

Or to put it another way, she was just too damn big to hold in your head.

With practiced care and precision, Megan lowered her hand, a thumb and forefinger each as big as me pinching me and lifting me right out of my living room. She brought me to her chest and gently slotted me into the harness that dangled from an industrial cable around her neck, my feet brushing the top of the modest 8-foot line of cleavage shown off by her strapless dress. On either side of me was a dozen feet of bare shoulder, skin immaculate and beautiful, and if I craned my neck back as far as I could, I could see the underside of her chin high above me.

There was a reason my apartment looked like a jewelry box.

“Where were you?” I asked, speaking into the harness’ mic. It went straight to an inconspicuous speaker in her left ear, fashioned out of a guitar amp. “I didn’t think you’d want to be late to the premiere.”

“I know, I know, I don’t. But my last meeting ran long, and it was one I couldn’t afford to duck out of.”

“What was it?”

“Hold on.” Megan walked over to her “vanity,” which was really a full studio unto itself, and set her face into position so that a dozen artists could work on touching her up—at her scale, it was more like painting a mural than doing someone’s makeup. I fidgeted in my harness while I waited, fishing out my phone to see what meetings I had on my docket tomorrow. Right, Homeland Security. Probably another lecture on how I needed to “serve my country” by tending to and modulating Megan’s emotional state; in other words, me being a good boyfriend could be the deciding factor in whether or not a city got flattened and the world’s most famous woman got nuked. I’d already gotten the exact same lecture from the FBI, the CIA, the Army, the National Guard, the Secret Service…

“Okay, let’s go,” Megan boomed, turning suddenly; my phone jostled from my hand, disappearing into the valley of cleavage beneath me like a piece of pocket lint; I doubt Megan even noticed.

“The meeting that held me up is actually pretty exciting!” Megan said as she gingerly walked toward the front door; even the compound’s special flooring would fracture if her footsteps were too heavy. “The DNC wanted to meet with me about running for president next election!”

“Pr-for president?!” Megan opened the door, a titanic slab of metal and wood, and stepped out onto the front lawn, which doubled as a public park. It was swarmed at all hours of the day with obsessive fans and… something more. Worshippers. Without even really trying, Megan was slowly becoming the figurehead of a full-on cult. Armed security shouted and shoved to keep the teeming mass clear of Megan’s path.

Hard to blame anyone for treating her like a goddess, I guess.

“I think they know it’s just a matter of time,” Megan said as she continued strolling along, oblivious to the chaos raging at her feet; did she trust her security team to keep anyone from getting annihilated by her footsteps, or did she simply not care? “I mean… not to brag, but I’m a pretty big deal. Remember how many write-ins I got last year? And I wasn’t even campaigning!”

“Yeah but, I mean… aren’t you too young?”

Megan shrugged, and I rode the motion like a wave. “Maybe, but people sure do like to make special exceptions for me. But even if no one budges on the age restriction, I think they just want to get in on the ground floor with me, y’know? Get me on their side before the other guys can get me on theirs.”

I was dangling some 80 feet in the air from Megan’s neck; the idea that anything about the current moment represented her ground floor was dizzying.

“Plus, if things keep going the way they have been… I mean, you’ve been watching the news, right? They’re saying I’m a threat to the world economy.  People might not put up with me for too much longer, unless… you know, unless I find a way to make them. And winning elections is a lot more peaceful than the alternatives, right?”

“Megan… should you be talking like that? You know… in public?”

In response, she just laughed, leaving me to wonder whether she just didn’t care what anyone thought… or if she wanted people to hear the implications she was making.

After all, tonight was really just one big Hollywood-produced veiled threat, right? 

Transportation was the one luxury no one could figure out how to replicate at Megan’s scale. The world’s largest cargo planes could barely manage half her weight, and any land vehicle big enough to carry her would require so much infrastructure that not even Megan could afford it, at least not yet. Luckily, it was much easier to make most things come to her instead; that SNL episode hadn’t been “live from New York” at all, it was shot at the compound. For things that we (“we…” she) couldn’t or didn’t want to do at home, well, 50-foot-long legs could take you pretty far. The premiere was being held at a bespoke outdoor theater some twenty miles out in the desert, which Megan could cover in roughly an hour.

The crowd from in front of the house followed us the entire way, or tried to anyway. Most of them were on foot, and despite their best efforts they just couldn’t hope to keep up with a woman who cleared 40 feet in a single step. The more prepared ones, the journalists and photographers and the more obsessed fans and worshippers, they had bicycles or electric scooters to help them keep pace. Even they had to be careful; they were all smart enough to steer clear of Megan’s colossal feet, but her evening gown alone weighed about twenty-eight tons; the ankle-length hemline was just about at eye level for a normal person, and with the amount of momentum it was carrying, getting sideswiped by it was likely lethal. Even the vortices of air trailing all around it were powerful enough to blow people into the air—there was a reason why nobody, nobody, was allowed on the ground-level of the Lambert compound except for Megan Lambert herself.

Of course, I couldn’t actually see what was going on at Megan’s feet, I could only speculate. I was too high up, my view obstructed by her shoulders and her bust. What I could see were the twinkling lights of the theater in the distance, and I could hear the low roar of the crowd that grew louder and louder with each thunderous footstep.

I quickly reached into my breast pocket for some earplugs.

“Hello, everyone! I’m so sorry to make you all wait!”

The screaming of the crowd made it clear that they didn’t mind. More security staff was already posted at the entryway, and they were immediately taxed to capacity holding back the ravenous horde of fans.

“I could give a whole long introduction,” Megan said, her vibrating chest pulsing through my entire body, “or we could just get to the main event! Why don’t we start the movie?”

Obviously, there weren’t many buildings in the world that could house Megan, and even fewer that could do it comfortably, which is why the premiere was being held outdoors. This remote patch of desert had been selected for two reasons: the first was space. Megan wanted… Megan demanded that her feature film debut was played at least once at a scale that she could appreciate. The world’s largest movie screen had been made to accommodate her, with a gargantuan projector to match. The sound system was so huge that everyone in attendance had to sign a contract to wear hearing protection. Honestly, this might not be an especially pleasant experience for anyone except the guest of honor… but that hadn’t stopped thousands of people form showing up, completely filling both the bottom row of seats and the second level, built up on a scaffold, one that Megan could still easily see over.

The reason this particular spot in the desert had been chosen was the natural rock formation situated behind the crowd seating, a 30-foot-high plateau that served as Megan’s seat. A dump truck of fresh popcorn was driven up near her foot, and Megan pulled it up onto her lap as soon as the driver had gotten out, shoveling more food than I could eat in a day into her mouth in a single bit, kernels of raining down on me from above.

“That’s one thing I do miss about being smaller,” she said, clearly attempting to speak quietly. “Food is so little now that it all just sorta feels like… mush in my mouth. There’s no real difference in textures to me anymore.”

A small wave of sympathetic “awws” from the crowd made it clear that Megan’s attempt at lowering her volume had failed.

Before I could respond, a sequence of loud ka-chunks echoed out as the floodlights surrounding the seating area shut off one by one, leaving us in the dark under a starry sky. The crowd quickly hushed themselves, everything going silent save for the soft hum of the projector, which was then drowned out by rapturous applause as the screen came to life. The applause carried through the entire opening credits, and only grew louder when Megan appeared on-screen, punctured only by laughter as people took in the opening scene, where she’d been CGI’d to look like her old, petite self.

“Honestly…” Megan muttered, almost certainly still too loud to actually go unheard. “They did a better job with this than I thought they would. I mean, you can still tell it’s fake, but…”

I immediately felt a knot of complicated emotions rise up inside me as I watched the scaled-down Megan argue with her on-screen boyfriend, some relatively unknown flavor-of-the-month prettyboy; no sense shelling out for a movie star when Megan was the sole draw of the film, right? But, watching her with him, watching a computer reproduction of his arm wrap around his shoulder while she leaned toward his chest, the video compositing not quite selling that the two were really standing next to each other… it made me think about when that had been us. When she’d been her old 4’11” self, my fun, gorgeous girlfriend, who never gave up on her dreams, no matter how impossible they’d seemed. I’d loved her back then… 

…And it hit me like a ton of bricks to admit that I’d loved her back then, that whatever I used to feel for her… it wasn’t there, anymore. Things had gotten rocky ever since she started growing, but I was willing to work through it, willing to try and figure out how to position myself in her life.  Somewhere along the line though, I’d stopped being motivated by anything like love. I was just… going through the motions. Or worse, maybe some part of me deep, deep down understood that Megan was gradually taking over the world, and the safest possible place to be was here, hung from her neck, the first trophy she’d claimed in her campaign of conquest. 

“Shit!” the word, echoing out from between Megan’s teeth, shook me out of my depressed thoughts.

“What is it?” I asked. Down below, the crowd was starting to turn and look at her, ignoring the movie. Gradually, it dawned on me that it hadn’t been quite his hot out when we first got here. And, was that… was that the sound of twenty-eight tons of fabric beginning to tear?