"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" asked Sarah, as she and her friend drove in a rental car from the hotel. "Wouldn't this make things awkward? If you'd rather find another woman for this I would understand."

"No... There isn't enough time to find a volunteer. I won't be alive much longer if we don't do it today. We also paid to come here, so the decision is final.... Besides, I would prefer that you be the one," replied Tabitha.

Tabitha's face was ashen. The two women were in a relationship, and had been living together for over a year. A few months ago Tabitha had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and the couple fell into despair until news about an experimental procedure in Japan offered them hope. This procedure was said to cure cancer through a radical process whereby the patient was reduced to microscopic size and then placed inside an ovum. This ovum would then be implanted in the uterus, and with the aid of an experimental drug, the encapsulated patient would regrow and be reborn healthy and normal, but initially at the size of a newborn. Some theorized it would also reset the ageing process, and with repeated use would result in clinical immortality.

But this was only theory, and it had not yet been performed on humans. So far it had been successfully performed on rats and even monkeys, but Dr. Sachiko Shimizu was now in search of a human volunteer. Many terminally ill volunteers had come forward, but ultimately she decided on Tabitha for the first trial. She greeted the two women as they entered the research hospital. "Hi! Much apologies if my English is not so good. I am Dr. Shimizu, and I am honored to assist in your treatment."

"Much obliged, Dr. Shimizu. If you can cure me I will be eternally grateful," Tabitha said as she shot out her hand for the shorter Japanese woman to shake. Tabitha, at 5'9", was fairly tall for a woman; and she towered over her doctor by at least 8 inches, just as she towered over most people she came across in this foreign land. Ironically, she would soon find herself microscopic in comparison. This wasn't a pleasant thought to her, but it was preferable to the certain death she would otherwise face.

Dr. Shimizu took the hand of the taller black woman and shook it vigorously. "I would also be eternally grateful to you if this treatment works, as it would... how do you say?... redeem my work when so many of my colleagues scoffed at it in the past." Dr. Shimizu then shifted her attention to the blonde woman, "Miss Sarah, yes? I hope you have taken the pills I had sent you. These pills are very important. If you do not take them then it is very likely your body will see Tabitha as a parasite and reject her. You would have a miscarriage, and she would be dead! Please do not neglect to take them as directed!"

"You have my word, Doctor. I wouldn't do anything to help the woman who means the world to me. I will not drink or smoke, and I promise to eat healthy during the pregnancy," Sarah said as she held her girlfriend's hand. Sarah was almost the opposite of Tabitha; she was as pale as a sheet of paper, whereas Tabitha was dark as ink; Sarah stood at 5'5" and was dwarfed by her partner, but here in Japan she too sometimes felt Amazonian.

"Good, Excellent! Now, we must first extract an ovum from Sarah. Nurse Magami will get you two prepared... I will meet you in room H-26 in a few hours," said Dr. Shimizu, as she turned and departed down the hall.

-------

Hours Later...

"You will feel a quivering feeling that may be unpleasant, but should not be painful", Dr. Shimizu told Tabitha as the dark woman lay naked on the strange surface of the size reduction pad.

The pad was shaped like a large bowl and was so large that it filled almost all of the room it occupied. The emitter itself was positioned directly above the pad and loomed ominously above Tabitha like an enormous metallic phallus, with a red blinking eye in the center. Tabitha had gone over this bizarre new shrinking procedure in her mind countless times, but nothing could prepare her for this. She felt very vulnerable, and being naked didn't help matters any. She understood that clothing couldn't be allowed where she was going, but couldn't she at least be permitted to wear a gown until the last possible minute? The hospital considered her feelings of modesty irrelevant; they had even been so brazen as to shave her entire body for her, including her pubic region!

Dr. Shimizu's words were of little comfort to her as the machine began to hum to life. As promised, she felt her body quiver as if her entire body lacked bones. Looking to either side, she observed the room get larger and larger. This process continued for several minutes, and when the machine finally stopped humming she marvelled at how large it had become, or rather how small she had become in comparison. The emitter was larger than any mountain now. The red blinking light in the center now glowed dimly like a dying star directly above her and within a moment the glowing ceased. The shrinking process was complete.

Tabitha sighed with relief that one process was completed, but the scariest was yet to come. The bowl shaped pad she was on had also dwindled during the process and it began to move as if Japan was experiencing one of its frequent Earthquakes. This, however, was not due to the shifting of Tectonic plates. The source of the quakes became obvious when the enormous bulk of Dr. Shimizu appeared over her. The once tiny Japanese woman was now as large as Mt. Fuji! She reached down and placed a plastic sort of cover over the pad.

----

Dr. Shimizu had done this process several times with animals and was familiar with the procedure, but she had to be extra cautious now that an actual human was involved. She walked over to the shrunken pad as carefully as she could so as not to cause too much shaking for her patient, but she knew some would be unavoidable. She knelt down over the shrunken bowl shaped pad that was similar to a bottle cap in appearance, but was considerably smaller. She pulled the cover out of her pocket and carefully snapped it in place over the pad. This cover was essential, because without it there was a possibility her patient could be blown away by her breathing, or even the slightest movement. As it was, she feared the tiny woman would be banged around pretty badly and made a mental note to tell the technicians to add safety straps in the future.

For now, she focused on the work at hand and as careful as possible she moved the tiny container to a specially microscope into which it locked into place. Ever so gently she removed the cover, and with her tools in hand she began her work. First, she placed a drop of liquid into the bowl some distance away from her microscopic patient. This drop of liquid contained one of Sarah's eggs, which had been prepared for Tabitha's entry. She then used her softest voice to instruct her tiny patient.

----

Tabitha could never find the right words to describe what it was like being under the microscope of the Japanese researcher, but she remembered it vividly until the day she died. She had been shook around inside her container during the trip over to the container, but not too badly. The container came to a rest, and within a moment she began to climb to her feet, only to see an enormous object appear inside her container. She took this object to be some sort of syringe, which (much to her relief) stayed well away from her. At the tip of the long plastic shaft a bead of translucent liquid appeared and began to swell, before finally succumbing to gravity and plopping onto the surface of her container.

The droplet would appear small and insignificant to anyone else, but to Tabitha it seemed a large pond that she could swim in! At the center of this "pond" was a large translucent blob with a surface of pits and crags. This had to be Sarah's ovum, yet it was so large that she could easily fit inside of it! This was, in fact, why she was here, and she knew it.

A loud booming voice from above began to instruct her. She followed these instructions by jumping onto the droplet. To her astonishment, the result was similar to jumping into the water bed at her home thousands of miles away. She was too small to break the surface tension of the droplet, and merely bounced off of it. She tried once more, and somehow managed to get on top of it. Moving slowly, she crawled her way towards the enormous egg. As she approached, a gaping incision became apparent in the egg, just as the voice had told her. She got to it and climbed inside...

----

Dr. Shimizu watched in fascination through her microscope as the tiny black woman moved like a water bug on top of the nutrient rich liquid that kept the ovum alive. Surface tension was something she hadn't considered as an issue. In previous trials that involved animals, she didn't have the benefit of being able to instruct her patients and so she simply forcefully injected the tiny rats and monkeys into the ova that would be their home during the regestation period. She briefly considered doing the same with Tabitha, but her tiny patient amazed her by getting ontop of the droplet.

Once the tiny nude woman had gotten inside, Dr. Shimizu used a specialized instrument to close the incision, sealing her within. She then moved the container to the room where Sarah was waiting, ready and eager to be impregnated with her diminutive lover. The couple had always wanted a baby, but neither expected it would be like this...

----

Nine months later, the world's attention was focused on a hospital where a normal blonde woman was giving birth to her first child...

Sarah screamed as her vaginal tissue stretched painfully. Something large inside of her was trying to come out. The obstetrician was astonished to see long and adult like hair on the tiny head of a very dark woman who was beginning to emerge from inside of his patient. The tiny woman's eyes were also those of an adult, as were all her other features, including a pair of fully developed breasts! The newborn smiled and greeted him with a "hello". The startled doctor, having never delivered a newborn like this before, wasted no time in handing her to the nurse!

Tabitha emerged from the darkness of her lover's vagina; not in the form of an infant, but as a fully developed woman of miniature proportions. Her brown eyes squinted in the bright light of the delivery room. Over the months since she was "conceived" the internal brightness never rose above a faint reddish-pink during the day when Sarah would sometimes expose her stomach to sunlight, but most of the time she was enveloped in complete darkness.

Tabitha did not cry or scream as any infant would, but instead was relieved to feel fresh air again. The room's temperature was comfortable to anyone else, but Tabitha began to shiver. She had become accustomed to Sarah's body temperature and in addition was covered in amniotic fluid. The nurse tenderly handed her to Sarah, who wrapped her baby in a soft towel and held her close to her chest. The doctor promptly snipped the umbilical cord, and Tabitha would later marvel that her once 'outie' belly button had since then become an 'innie'.

Sarah smiled down at her tiny baby, and gently kissed her. Tabitha's face flushed at all the attention she was receiving. Later, she would be brought home and Sarah would bathe her and wash her hair clean of the fluid that now dried in it. Both women especially looked forward to the breast-feeding; in time this would help the miniature Tabitha regrow to her former size of 5'9", and it would help Sarah lose the weight she had put on during the pregnancy.

Both women lived happily for the remainder of their days. Rather than making the relationship awkward as they had feared, this procedure had brought them much closer, and forged a bond that was stronger than either had ever known...

THE END