*Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll* by Mary A. Turzillo
       Let no one accuse this of being a tall tale!
--------


       Thomas Maximilian Abraham Augustus Grand yearned for a woman who could
hold him in the palm of her hand. No lesser consort would fulfill his dreams.
His twelve centimeters would complement her meter and three quarters.
       Thomas Grand, or Thumbkin, as the media later called him, was a man
born before his time. His parents, Doctors Pete and Polly Grand, had wanted an
astronaut's career for their son, and so conspired to conceive a baby who, at
maturity, would stand only twelve centimeters tall. Future space missions,
they believed, would be crewed by people who massed less than two hundred
grams.
       Thumbkin exceeded expectations. His body had matured fast, with fewer
cell divisions, hence fewer total cells. Thanks to clever genetic engineering,
a far greater proportion of his brain could be devoted to higher cognitive
skills -- symbol manipulation and spatial perception. And a smaller, more
neotenous brain enhanced his synaptic firing speed -- a determinant of
intelligence.
        But shortly after Thumbkin's twelfth birthday, public opinion turned
Luddite; factory workers overran and trashed nanotech labs. In such a climate,
Congress cut space and science funding to the bone. Further, existing
astronauts formed unions and fought the genetic engineering of the mouse-sized
astronauts who might spoil their own chances at the planets.
       They only succeeded in destroying the space program. Little guys like
Tom Grand would have been affordable crew on a mission to Mars; the big guys
spoiled it for everybody.
       Truth was, Thumbkin didn't much want to be an astronaut. He preferred
inner space -- the submolecular world.
       True, nanotechnology had a really bum rap, hysteria spilling over from
the furor over genetically modified foods. But, following his own dream,
Thumbkin enrolled in one of the rare nanotech Ph.D. programs still left in the
country, at Buckeye State. His own condition was not due to nanotechnology,
but a simple in-utero hormone treatment. He was lucky; his only deformities
were an outsized nose, disproportionally large feet, and genitalia to match.
Of the last, he never really could conduct a comparison, since he was the only
man of his height in the Midwest, although several others lived in California,
and one or two in east Asia.
       In the lab at Buckeye, he had his problems. He always had to get his
partner to lift him up to the computer or the lab table, though he petitioned
for a ladder. Once level with the instruments, he scampered nimbly about,
jumping from key to key to program the atomic force microscope. Once he was
trapped in a chamber of self-replicating Penrose tiles, and saved his own life
by hanging from the lid while the crazy quilt of polygons surged around his
feet.
       His professors had to read his exams with a microscope. They often
tried to psychoanalyze him, saying he only went into nanotech because he'd
otherwise never get to work with anything smaller than he was.
       One sympathetic professor, a buxom brunette who inspired in Thumbkin a
fantasy about tiptoeing along her low neckline and possibly burrowing in her
cleavage, said he should try for a woman his own size. Ah, but those puny
specimens (there was one finishing her master's in medieval French literature
right there at Buckeye State) didn't get his juices flowing at all. He liked
big women.
       Several adventurous women did accept dates with him, but some
embarrassing incident always sabotaged the relationship before it really
blossomed. With Mindy, it was when they went to a movie and the ticket seller
let them in on one ticket, not even noticing Thumbkin, who was standing on the
floor beside Mindy. With Gretchen, there was that awful evening when Thumbkin
decked himself out in a Hawaiian shirt and perched on Gretchen's lapel, only
to hear her mother compliment her on the cute new brooch.
       In 2023, when Thumbkin was about to get his degree, the commencement
speaker was a jovial billionaire named Harry P. Caesar, who had made a fortune
in utilities, having speculated on fusion reactors just before they became
feasible technology. Mr. Caesar made an audacious offer from the podium.
       "Gentlemen, this is a time for boldness and forward thinking. Put aside
the hand-wringing of the Luddites and solve three problems for me. The first
man to give me answers to these burning issues will earn a controlling share
of the stock in my company. Not only that, but I'll marry my daughter off to
him."
       A buzz of excitement rose from the graduating student body. One female
graduate shouted, "What if a woman offers the answers?"
       "I'll marry her myself!" crowed Caesar.
       They settled back in their seats, waiting for the three problems.
       "First," said Caesar, "is the problem of the slums of Great Lakes City.
The poor shoot each other or die of drug overdoses. We need to give them a
better life. Second, there is the problem of world hunger."
       Students exchanged wary comments. Such problems were difficult, but
perhaps the superior minds in the class of 2023 could overcome centuries of
adversity. Caesar rapped on the podium.
       "And third, my new Sebeliuswagen X-03 has a miss so bad it never
reaches its peak acceleration."
       Dismayed murmurs rippled through the hall. The Sibeliuswagen X-03, the
most pretentious lemon ever built? Poverty and world hunger, sure, but the
Sibeliuswagen?
       Still, graduates swarmed up to Caesar after the ceremony. Thumbkin was
able to attract his attention only by using a pair of straight pins as pitons
and some buckminsterfullerene monofilament to climb up his pant leg and suit
jacket, after which he buttonholed the multibillionaire. In fact, he crawled
up the inside of Caesar's lapel and stuck his head through the buttonhole.
       "Listen," said Thumbkin. He had a high voice, it's true, but not as
squeaky as you might think. After all, a blue jay is pretty small, and you
know what kind of racket _they_ make. "I can do all that. Just give me a
chance."
       "Hm," said Caesar. "I see you are graduating summa cum laude. And yet,
I suspect your cuteness influenced your professors to give you high grades. If
none of your classmates can solve these problems, I suppose I'll give you a
chance."
       It was completely unfair!
       Thumbkin, discouraged, trudged back to his apartment, which was on the
top of his best buddy's microwave oven, and followed the antics of his
classmates as they tried to earn Caesar's reward.
       Gumbon Carlsbad, the class cut-up, tried to reclaim the slums of Great
Lakes City by using assemblers to change all the paving materials in the
poorer neighborhoods to white chocolate. He apparently believed the endorphins
would assuage the anger of the unemployed and disaffected. He then passed out
fifty dollar bills made by other assemblers, ones which were programmed to
give each bill a different serial number. His scheme would have worked, had
Caesar not been a law-abiding man. Counterfeiting is still a crime.
       Millicent Kratchett, who wanted to bed Caesar rather than marry his
daughter, tried introducing a retrovirus which changed all the dope in
northeast Ohio to vitamin B12. The ensuing riots were particularly difficult
to control because all the participants were completely lucid and out-thought
the police at every turn.
       The local TV gods and goddesses sneered so hatefully at Millicent and
Gumbon that no more candidates were willing to try their luck. This was
Thumbkin's cue.
       He first put an ad in the paper calling for a collection of all
firearms in the city. He promised these would be converted, by his assemblers,
into televisions with free satellite links.
       When the televisions were delivered (and they were very thin, elegant
ones, massing no more than the guns they had been made from), they turned out
to have free Internet connections, with special search engines which, when
they opened X-rated sites or chain e-mail jokes, would artfully segue into
instructional material.
       "I don't know," said Caesar. "They seem happy, but let's see what you
can do to solve world hunger."
       This proved an easier task, although it took longer. Thumbkin created a
fleet of self-replicating robots to deliver what he called Mother Cupboards to
the poor of the world. The cupboards themselves were self-replicating, usually
creating their mass from sand or rock. Then, as a third generation replicator,
each Mother Cupboard was capable of converting whatever was on hand -- dirt,
weeds, used tires, discarded compact discs -- to a beans-and-rice mix that
looked and tasted like pizza. Problems arose when it was discovered that a bad
LDL-HDL cholesterol ratio could result from the fact that the pizza lacked
omega-3 oils, but by this time many young people of Great Lakes City had
gotten advanced degrees in Replicator Programming as a result of their new
Internet connections. They volunteered their services to add anchovies. And,
by a clever feat of engineering, these were a new type of anchovies that
didn't taste like anchovies.
       Buckeye State had allowed Thumbkin laboratory space as a publicity
stunt to make the public forget about Millicent and Gumbon's gaffes. Caesar
came to him there one afternoon. Thumbkin knew he had the wealthy man in the
palm of his hand (to use a ridiculous metaphor), because Caesar had come alone
rather than having his secretary call.
       "There's the matter of my Sibeliuswagen X-03," Caesar said. "I can't
find a local mechanic who knows what's wrong. They want me to send it back to
Finland."
       Thumbkin discovered the problem after only an hour of investigation.
       Swinging himself out of the engine compartment on the alternator belt,
he reported, "There's a family of mice living in the air intake manifold."
       "Nonsense!" Caesar scoffed. "None of the other mechanics found mice."
       "None of the other mechanics actually walked through the intake
manifold. But there's another problem: your fuel supply."
       "The fuel line is fine," said Caesar.
       "Fuel _supply_. Tell you what. You need a loaner? I'll have to keep it
overnight."
       Caesar decided to take a cab when he realized the loaner was Thumbkin's
hand-held bicycle.
       Next day, Caesar returned to find Thumbkin crawling out of a strangely
empty engine compartment.
       "What have you done to my engine?" shrieked Caesar.
       "Improved it. It now runs on hydrogen. I installed nanotubes to process
the hydrogen, but you'll find it's fairly cheap, and a tank should last you
about -- oh, say 2000 kilometers."
       Caesar jumped in the car and revved it up. Thumbkin rode on the dash,
car-dancing to the music Caesar had on the sound system, "Dr. Mesmer's
Spiritual Ferret" by Machine Embryo. Several miles later, Caesar said, "You
did it! Well, let me write you a check."
       "Not so fast," said Thumbkin. "You promised a controlling share of the
stock in your company. And I have witnesses -- everybody at that graduation."
       Caesar harumphed. "Well, of course. I meant we can meet in my office
tomorrow about noon and draw up the papers."
       "_Not so fast_," Thumbkin continued. "There's the small matter of my
future bride."
       "You can't mean Princess," groaned Caesar.
       "The woman of my dreams. The mother of my future children."
       "You realize she's a free woman. I was only joking when I said I'd
marry her off to the winner of my contest."
        "I was only joking when I said your car will continue to run," said
Thumbkin. "When this tank runs down, you'll have to find the gas lid release,
which I conveniently relocated."
        Caesar sighed. "Well, she could do worse. Of course, I always wanted
grandchildren, and you don't seem -- "
        "Don't tell me what I can and can't do," said Thumbkin.
          ***
Thumbkin soon learned why Caesar gave in so easily. Princess had been an
idealistic, bright girl until she went wrong at age eighteen. Now she was
heavily involved with a drug lord named Dick Troll.
        Troll was a massive, ugly man who paradoxically exuded sexual
magnetism. Standing over seven feet tall, he routinely provoked terror in his
criminal lieutenants by barefistedly punching holes in the roofs of their
cars, or hanging them by the back of their shirts on basketball hoops. Women,
however, swooned over him. Princess, Caesar's sexy daughter, seemed to be one
who had been swept up by his animal charm.
        Thumbkin decided that he could best win Princess's regard by showing
what a goon her lover was. He showed up in Troll's lavish, tastelessly
decorated apartment unannounced. In fact, he simply crawled under the door.
        "I've heard of you," Troll said. "You're the little chemistry major
that Daddy Caesar wants my woman to hop in bed with. Never happen. Princess
goes for big men."
        _The bigger they are, the harder they fall_, thought Thumbkin. But he
merely said, "I think Princess will go for a big brain rather than a big
mouth."
        "Haw. Your brain can't be much bigger than my little toe, now can it?"
        "Doesn't matter," said Thumbkin. "Your brain is smaller than _my_
little toe."
        Troll had not had much opportunity in his short life to learn anger
management, so he lifted his huge athletic shoe (size 23 triple D) and stomped
down hard on Thumbkin --
         -- or rather on the place Thumbkin had been. The nerve impulse between
Thumbkin's head and Thumbkin's feet was quite short, him being so small and
all, so he was gone like the beam of light from a laser cat toy.
        In fact, Troll had slammed his foot down on a fork Thumbkin had
surreptitiously dragged in behind him, and the fork flew in the air and
embedded itself in the bridge of Troll's nose.
        Thumbkin thumbed his own tiny nose at Troll, and the mammoth drug lord
dove after him. The tiny man led the giant on a wild goose chase around the
posh apartment. A priceless lamp in the shape of Elvis exorcising a demon from
Marilyn Monroe crashed into the plush sculpted carpet, burning a hole in the
beautiful cabbage rose design. The chandelier, composed of dangling crystal
Hummel knockoffs, crashed as Troll made a wild jump for Thumbkin, who was
shinnying up the electrical cord. Troll slid through the door to the
downstairs powder room and skidded only to slam his head into the porcelain
toilet base.
        Thumbkin perched on the purple crushed velvet commode cover and swung
his legs. "Don't make me do this," he said. "Can't we fight over her like
gentlemen?"
        "A duel!" Troll roared.
        "A drinking duel?" Thumbkin asked. He knew the answer. Troll's forte
was in more deadly drugs than alcohol.
          ***
A half hour later, Thumbkin sat on the coffee table, which was surfaced with
rose quartz inlaid with shark teeth. Troll sat on an orange flower-print
leather sofa. A hundred-dollar bill and a pile of pink powder rested between
them. Tension was in the air.
        "Pure Strawberry Lucid," said Troll. "The man who's left standing gets
the babe."
        "If she'll have me," said Thumbkin. He hated how tiny his voice
sounded, and he had some ideas how to fix that if he won the lady and the
stock.
        "Haw!" barked Troll, and rolled up the bill. He laid a line of the
designer drug on the table and gave the bill to Thumbkin.
        Thumbkin staggered under the weight of the bill. He clasped both arms
around it to keep it from unrolling. Then he laid it to the line and began to
inhale.
        Assemblers he had sprinkled on his upper lip went to work. They
decomposed the organic compound of the drug into harmless gasses. The oxygen
gave him a little kick, but other than that, he felt nothing but growing
tension. Would his plan work?
        Troll grimaced. "I have to hand it to you, shorty." He rolled another
bill (which Thumbkin had counted on) and laid another line.
        Thumbkin had a different kind of assembler ready and he dropped a pinch
of them into the line while Troll closed his eyes waiting for the rush.
        The drug and the assembler reached Troll's nose and began their
transformation. His nose began to weave itself into a bright pink bungee cord.
One end was stuck to his face, the other to the hideous coffee table.
        "Mwat nave nou none?" roared Troll. He tried to yank himself away,
dragging the coffee table around the room with his bungee-nose. He twisted and
rolled this way and that, but his struggle only resulted in wrapping his nose
around his neck three times. He clawed at his nose-necktie, bellowing like a
boar.
        Thumbkin, straining every muscle he had, lifted the phone off the hook
and punched numbers.
          ***
"I don't know," said Princess. "I admit, seeing him like this kind of shoots
down his sex appeal. But isn't this a pretty cruel fate, even if he is a
rotten, no-good drug lord?"
        "If you but say the word," said Thumbkin, "I will send other assemblers
to repair his damaged nose and face. Maybe even improve them."
        "You certainly strike a hard bargain," she said thoughtfully, bouncing
Thumbkin on her palm. "I hardly know you. And you're -- well -- uh, not to my
scale."
        "Oh, if you want me to, I'll set him free no matter what your decision
about dating me. Just say the word."
        She looked relieved. "Well, that's big of you. Why don't you mail the
repair assemblers to his secretary? That way he won't come after you."
        "I'm not worried," said Thumbkin. "He tried that before."
        She smiled and held her hand out so that Thumbkin could climb up on her
shoulder. The two went to a nearby Mocha House and ordered a decaf iced cafe
voltaire with cinnamon sprinkles, which turned out to be a favorite for both
of them.
        "I have to admit, I do admire your style," said Princess.
        "And I yours. You had that big gorilla eating out of your hand, didn't
you?"
        "My father never understood," she said. "I thought I could save Dick
Troll. I thought the love of a good woman would turn his harsh soul to
goodness. I love a challenge."
        Thumbkin dragged the sugar container over to their cafe voltaire to use
as a step so he could dip out a portion in the thimble he always carried with
him. "I love this stuff! If I ever go crazy, stop me from designing assemblers
to turn Lake Erie into a sea of cafe voltaire!"
        Princess gave him a serious look. "I'll keep that in mind."
        "Listen to me," he said. "You don't have to make a commitment. I know I
won that game with your father, and then I dueled with your monster lover. But
you do what you want. You're a free woman."
        She sat back and settled her cashmere sweater around her shoulders.
"Well, excuse me! It's really so darn flattering that you want me so much."
        "I didn't mean that," said Thumbkin. "I want you more than anything in
the world. Lord, Princess, I can have most anything I want. Haven't I proven
that today? But what I want is you."
       "You'll have to prove you really, really want me," said Princess.
       Thumbkin's heart fell.
       Another test.
       "I want," she said, leaning forward so her hair draped like a silken
curtain all around his body, "the Moon and Mars."
       Thumbkin didn't like the sound of that.
       She sat back. "Come on now. You're the master of nanotechnology, but
maybe that's because it's been swept under the rug. It's only taught at
backwater universities, because the labor unions don't want people to lose
their stupid jobs."
       He gulped. "True enough. I changed a little bit of the world. I wiped
out crime in Great Lakes City. I abolished world hunger. I changed a
gangster's nose into a bungee cord. But I can't change people's minds right
here in northeast Ohio. They don't like nanotechnology."
       "And that's why my father will never be able to set up shop on the
Moon. I want the Moon. And Mars. And some other planets. For my father. For
us. Space travel. Well?"
       He sat down heavily on the edge of the sugar container. "Give me some
time to think this over."
          ***
Thumbkin went back to his apartment on top of his friend's microwave. He
watched the news on a wristwatch TV his mother had given him. He flipped
through his graduate school textbooks. He had had them converted to electronic
form because he couldn't manage the huge, heavy pages. He thought back to his
early childhood, when he first learned to use a computer. It wasn't easy, but
he finally had learned a kind of touch-type tap-dance that accomplished what
he needed. He used a touch screen instead of a mouse, and reclined the monitor
so he could reach the icons he needed with a drinking straw.
       For a week, Thumbkin surfed the web. And he surfed the pages of his own
mind.
       When the week was over, he went to Princess again.
       "If you will be mother to my children, I will send them to the Moon,
and probably beyond."
       It was her turn to ask for time to think. "How can you promise me such
a thing?"
       "You either have faith in me, or you don't."
          ***
Princess and Thumbkin had a quiet wedding. Her father, Drs. Pete and Polly
Grand, and a few friends from both sides.
       I won't describe their wedding night. They were creative people, and
since you, my reader, are also creative, I will leave such matters to your
imagination.
       Thumbkin was busy lobbying and petitioning, and also finding scientists
to listen to his plans.
       A year later, Thumbkin took Princess to dinner at Monaco's in the
Flats. After the espresso and tiramisu, he carefully swept crumbs off the
table by dragging a napkin across it. Then he brought a small green egg out of
a suede bag he had carried in with him. "In here," he said, "is the future."
He put it on the table.
       She reached out for it, but he said, "I'll roll it over to you, but be
very careful. Inside are our children."
       She drew back, then as if by an act of will, took the egg. "You have
done this without my permission. You've taken our DNA, mine and yours -- but
without telling me -- "
       He bent his head sorrowfully. "I did not truly trick you. You promised
we could have children. In this egg, a thousand children are growing.
Nanomachines feed and rock them. Our images are projected into their minds."
He didn't mention that the children were so small their eyes perceived images
in blue and shades of ultraviolet. Princess would figure that out soon enough.
Now, the revelation of their existence was enough.
       She touched the egg. "A thousand?"
       "A thousand and twenty-four. We must name them. We must find ways to
communicate with them. We must teach them and provide the best education
possible." He reached out and grasped her index finger, hugging it to his
breast. "We must love them."
       "Astronauts," she said. "But how can they go to the Moon? How can they
operate a space vehicle? How can they live in a space habitat?"
       "We will teach them to control the assemblers and the manipulators,"
Thumbkin said.
       Princess held the egg in her hand, and suddenly Thumbkin was afraid for
it. She could crush it, and he couldn't stop her.
       But instead, she asked, "If I put it next to my heart, will the heat of
my body harm them?"
       He smiled, relieved. "The egg converts heat to energy for the
nanomachines that tend them. You could put it in a fire and they would
thrive."
       She kissed the egg, and put it in the bosom of her low-cut dress.
"Safe, for the time, then. You've been busy."
       "Our children are so small, they don't need space agencies. We can
build a ship for them ourselves."
       "With Daddy's money?"
       He shrugged. "Partly. But also from other investors with admiration for
an audacious plan."
       "When?"
       "Not immediately. The children will grow fast, but they won't be ready
for several years. In the meantime, we must educate them."
       "You promised _me_ the Moon and Mars," she said.
       He squeezed her index finger, then climbed onto the cuff of her velvet
jacket. "Have I failed your test, then?"
       She thought for a minute, but she knew the true answer. "No. No, I
guess not. My children will go to the stars. I guess that's enough."
       "They will write home," he said.



       Copuright (C) 2002 by Mary A. Turzillo.
--------