Order of Magnitude

I. Helpless Captive

      The prisoner paced back and forth in his cell. An eighth of an inch of glass was all that separated him from freedom. An eighth of an inch! Not that much to an average person. But this prisoner was not an average person. He was a parv, a member of a proud race of tiny individuals. An eighth of an inch? Might as well be a mile to someone who stood at a mere 2 inches tall.

      The parv looked around. There were only 8 in the cell now beside him. There had been 12 when they first got captured, but each day, regular as clockwork, one of the prisoners was taken away by the giant scientist who had captured them. Without any weapons, there was nothing to do but watch. 8 parvs. 9 including himself. That meant 3 days had already passed in the tank. At the most, he only had 9 more days to live. He didn't know what would be worse, being the next to go or the last to go.

      "You might as well take a seat, Jacques," one of the inmates said from the floor. "Nothing to see out there."

      He shot a glance to the other parv, a boisterous young man named Edison. After a few days in this glass tank, Edi acted much less animated than he used to. The grim situation had apparently taken its toll on him. It had taken its toll on all of them. But Edison was lying down to die; Jacques, by contrast, was pacing the tank.

      "We're going to get out of here," he lied. "I can promise you all that. I don't know how, but we'll find a way to get out of here."

      Edison stood. "Listen, man. I want to believe you; I do. But I can't see how we're going to escape from this place. We have no rope, no supplies, nothing. We're toast, man. May as well accept that."

      Jacques turned back to the wretched view of the lab. Edison is wrong, he thought. That scientist will make a mistake eventually. Then we can make our attack.

     It was a fleeting fantasy, of course. No parv had ever taken down a human before. They were thirty times their size. But he remained adamant in his delusions. "You'll see, Edi." he smiled. "You'll see. The scientist will eventually lower his guard when the tank is open, and we'll be free to go."

      Edison chuckled, his jolly self coming back. "The scientist only opens the tank for two reasons," he explained. "The first is to drop in a piece of cake so we don't starve to death in here. And the other..." He let the idea trail off, but it was enough for Jacques to get the point. He didn't want to be reminded of the second part anyway.

      "We'll just have to find a way out during one of those times, then."

      Edison meandered back to his corner of the tank. "I don't know, man. It seems pretty hopeless to me. Might as well sit back and relax for the last few days of your life."

      He shook his head forcefully, trying to fling his own doubts away. He couldn't relax. He couldn't give up. If he did, then he was signing their death warrants. As long as he stayed on his own two feet they had a chance.

      The prisoner paced back and forth, searching every square inch of the room for a way out. The glass wasn't going to shatter. He gave up on that idea his first day in. If he wanted to leave, he was going to have to figure something else out. And when he did, he wanted to make sure he was prepared.

      A door at the far end of the room opened, and the scientist strolled in wearing rubber gloves. He always came around this time to take one of them away. The parvs backed into a corner, trying to avoid being today's victim. Jacques narrowed his eyes and watched the scientist approach.

      It was day four in the tank.