Micro

“I don’t think the distance we fall matters very much,” Peter Jansen said. He had been trying to figure out the physics of being very small.

It was all about gravity. And inertia.

Peter said: “What’s important is Newton’s equation for-”

“Enough! I say we jump,” Karen interrupted.

“Jump,” Jenny said.

“Jump,” Amar said.

“Oh God,” Danny moaned. “But we don’t know where we are!”

“Jump,” Erika said.

“This is our only chance,” Rick Hutter said. “Jump.”

“Jump,” Peter said.

“Okay,” Karen said. “I’m going to run along this seam at the bottom, and cut it open. Try to stay close together. Imagine you’re skydivers. Arms and legs wide, a human kite. Here we gooo-”

“But just a minute-” Danny yelled.

“Too late!” Karen shouted. “Good luck!”

Peter felt her brush past him, the knife in her hand, and a moment later the paper bag tilted beneath his feet, and he fell into darkness.

The air was surprisingly cool and wet. And the night was brighter, now that he was outside the bag: he could see the trees around him, and the ground below as he fell toward it. He fell surprisingly fast-alarmingly fast-and for a moment he wondered if they had collectively made a calculation error, out of their shared dislike for Danny.

They knew, of course, that air resistance was always a factor in the speed of falling objects. In daily life, you didn’t think about it, because most things in life presented similar air resistance. A five-pound barbell and a ten-pound barbell would fall at the same rate. Same thing for a human being and an elephant. They’d fall at pretty much the same rate.

But the students were now so small that air resistance did matter, and they had collectively guessed that the effect of air resistance would overcome the effect of mass. In other words, they would not fall at their full-size speed.

They hoped.

Now, with the wind whistling in his ears, tears blurring his eyes as he fell downward, Peter clenched his teeth and wiped his eyes and tried to see where he was headed. He looked around and could not see any of the others falling through the air, though he heard a soft moan in the darkness. Looking back to the ground, he saw he was closing in on a broad-leafed plant, like a giant elephant ear. He tried to spread his arms wide and shift his position so he would hit the leaf in the center.

He hit it perfectly. He smacked into the elephant ear-cold, wet, slippery-and he felt the leaf bend beneath him, then rise back up and in a swift movement toss him back into the air, like a tumbler on a trampoline. He yelled in surprise, and when he came down again he landed near the edge of the leaf, spun, and slid on the water-slick surface down to the far tip.

And fell.

In darkness, he hit another leaf beneath, but it was hard to see down here, and he again rolled down toward the tip of the leaf. He clawed at the green surface, trying to halt his inevitable descent. It was to no avail-he fell-hit another leaf-fell-and finally landed on his back in a bed of wet moss where he lay, gasping and frightened, staring up at the canopy of leaves high above, which blotted out the sky.

“You just going to lie there?”

He looked over. It was Karen King, standing over him.

“Are you hurt?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“Then get up.”

He struggled to his feet. He noticed she didn’t help him. He was unsteady standing in the wet moss, which leaked through his sneakers. His feet were cold and wet.

“Stand over here,” she said. It was as if she was talking to a child.

He moved to stand beside her, on a patch of dry ground. “Where are the others?”

“Somewhere around here. It may take some time.”

Peter nodded, looking at the jungle floor. From his new perspective half an inch above the ground, the jungle floor was incredibly rugged. Moss-covered stumps of rotted limbs rose like skyscrapers, and fallen branches-twigs, really-made ragged arcs twenty or thirty feet above the ground. Even the dead leaves on the floor were larger than he was, and whenever he took a step, they shifted, moving around him and beneath his feet. It was like trying to move through a rotten organic junkyard. And of course everything was wet; everything was slippery, and often slimy. Where, exactly, had they landed? They had been driven around for a long time. They could be anywhere on Oahu-anywhere there was a forest, at least.

Karen jumped up on a large twig, nearly fell off, got her balance, and sat on it, her legs dangling down. Then she put her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle. “They should all hear that.” She whistled again.

Just then something bulky and dark in color crunched out of the undergrowth. At first they couldn’t see what it was, but the moonlight revealed a gigantic beetle, jet black, moving past in a surefooted gait. Its compound eyes gleamed faintly. It was covered with jointed black armor, and had spiky hairs bristling from its legs.

Karen drew her legs up respectfully as the beetle crawled below the twig she was perched on.