Notes, this is set in my Al's Everything Store universe. Al's Everything Store is a creative cross between an Odd Lots and a flea market, owned by GeorgeAnn's parents. In the back of the store, above a couple of business offices is a loft where GeorgeAnn likes to hang out and build stuff. Her creations are visible, in part by shoppers in the store. During the course of the school year, she's been building a sort of outer space/fantasy model city. By and large, it's becoming an attraction for shoppers, although her peers at school mostly tease her about it and criticize her for her exuberant imagination.

GeorgeAnn put the finishing touches on the trans dimensional teleport portal. The miniature city she was building in the loft was taking shape and she thought it would be fun if there was a way for humans to visit it. Of course, people were much too large to walk the streets, much less enter the buildings, but she still though it would be nice to have a fun way to pretend to be able to enjoy the city at its scale. So she decided to build a device to manage the change from the human dimension to that of the city.

The portal began with a dented and torn dehumidifier box. A forklift accident, she guessed, or some other robotic mover that instead of moving the object from one part of the warehouse to another, instead punched a hole through the front of the box and half way through the dehumidifier. Since the device was too damaged to be sold, she scavenged its parts as well as its container.

She cut away the ripped cardboard and enlarged the opening to create a doorway that was nearly as tall as the box. The box was sealed and the edges and rest of the tears repaired with paper packing tape. The kind that you had to add water to activate the glue—no one wanted to buy that kind any more—but it was great for painting over. She painted the box white for starters. It was always easier to paint other colors over white.

Using piece of old plywood for reinforcement, she mounted the scavenged compressor from the dehumidifier on top of the box. After all, what better way to change the size of a person than with a compressor? 

[Side bar: exploded view of the guts of a decompressor]

Inside the box, she mounted a T-handled slider. It was assembled from a bundle of pencils stuck into a block of styrofoam packing material, copiously reinforced with hot melt glue and wrapped neatly in layers of packing tape until it looked as if it might have been molded from a solid block. She painted it red. After all, red was a warning color and one ought to be cautious about using a trans dimensional teleport portal.

The slider was mounted into a slot cut into the side of the box, with the handle facing inward so that the occupant could control it. On the outside, she anchored the slider with another piece of styrofoam and glue. Then she mounted a toggle so that when the slider moved down, it would switch the power on, and off when moved in the opposite direction. She enclosed the whole assembly on the outside in another small box fabricated from cardboard scraps and packing tape. She thought it looked cool to have boxes and hardware affixed to the outside.

The next step was to mount strings of white lights along the inside corners and outside edges of the portal. Colored lights would have looked cooler, but what she had were white lights, so they had to do.

The inside walls and ceiling were painted white. She added concentric circles to the floor of the box in yellow and blue. Then everything inside got a nice dusting of iridescent glitter.

GeorgeAnn thought about making a sign for the device. People might like to know that it was a trans dimensional teleport portal. But hardly anyone cared about what she called her machines. Kids from school who asked, just made fun of them and commented about how impossible it was for her to build such things. Still, it seemed like the machine needed some kind of labeling. So with a collection of glitter gel pens and Sharpies, she drew circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles and lines some overlapping and others nested until the entire surface of the box was covered. She imagined that she was covering the box with the description of its purpose as well as detailed operating instructions. When that was done, she sprayed the entire machine with light whispers of brown paint to make it appear like the machine was old and just a little decrepit.

“George, you up there?” She heard Paul call from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yea.”

She heard the six year old climbing the stairs. Since there was no railing, he wasn’t supposed to be up here, but she figured as long as he stayed close to her, he was safe.

“Dad says no spray painting while the store is open.” 

Oops. In her rush to complete the project, she’d forgotten about that.

“That’s cool. What is it?”

“It’s a trans dimensional teleport portal. It lets you enter the city as a tiny person so you can go into the buildings and look around.” Paul, unlike her so-called friends from school, appreciated her stories and explanations.

“Can I try it?” He walked around the box studying it as if he could read and comprehend the instructions.

“The paint isn’t dry yet.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Before she could raise another objection, he was inside the box and testing the sliding switch. It was a bit stiff to operate at first, then slid smoothly from top to bottom.

First the inside lights turned on, then the outside lights lit. Two seconds later, the compressor kicked on with a soft rumble and a swish. It was such a cool effect that at first she didn’t notice that Paul was nowhere to be seen.

###