Don’t worry about it
They will figure it out
This story was written for Flash Fiction February by Bradley Ramsey.
If you want to read more of my writings, please read my published books: The Seekers: Soul-Ties, Kirin, and Perrin Peters. And if you don’t want to buy my books but still want to support me, I’m on Patreon. And if you prefer one-time payments, you can Buy Me A Pizza or a Coffee.
“What do you mean, Earth overpopulation?” I ask my TV.
The rude presenter ignores me and keeps on talking.
“When the number of people goes too high, the food and housing prices are supposed to go up, causing fewer and fewer people to have kids, which slows down the population growth or even reverses it,” I argue. “Such high prices lead to corruption and crime, which brings the birth rate even lower. When one country is overpopulated, people may hope to escape somewhere else or to receive international help, but when the entire Earth is in this situation, you just don’t have kids!”
The TV presenter keeps ignoring me, and so I turn my head to Max.
“Don’t look at me, Greg!” She shakes her head. “I would never bring a child into this world while the situation is what it is. We barely have enough for ourselves!”
I nod, for at least my wife has some sense, which she occasionally lends to me with only a moderate interest.
“So, what do we do now?” she asks.
I sigh, trying to understand how it came to this. “We keep our eyes and ears open and take all of the opportunities we can.”
The rest of the day proves to be more pleasant. Still, from time to time, her question pops into my mind. What do we do now?
~*~
“So, how does it work, shrinking everything and everyone to fit on Earth?” I ask the scientist. Or the assistant. Or the clerk. Whomever sits in front of me in this research center.
“As you may know,” she starts explaining, using her hands to illustrate, “atoms are mostly empty. There’s a tiny nucleus in the center, and a certain number of electrons around it. The space between the electrons and the nucleus is huge compared to their sizes. And so, if we get rid of some of the empty space, if we bring the electrons closer to the nucleus—”
“Then, the electrons would either have to make more rotations per second if they want to conserve their linear speed, or they would have to slow down to maintain the number of rotations,” I interrupt her. “And the strong nuclear force would start interacting with the electrons, since they would be so close now.”
She shakes her head, laughing, “No, we won’t make the atoms that small.”
I exchange looks with my wife in complete silence.
“So,” I frown, “what about the electrons? How do they just cooperate and start orbiting lower? Plus, many chemical reactions occur because electrons are knocked from their orbits, which would be much harder to do when the atoms were smaller.”
“Don’t worry about it!” she laughs again, waving her hand. “We’ve calculated it, and it’s gonna work.”
“Okay…” I think, feeling how my wife squeezes my hand harder. “Since we’d have the same number of atoms, they would still have the same mass. And so, we would be smaller, but have the same weight. Our diaphragm would have less muscle mass, but it would still have to expand the lungs of the same weight. Our heart would become smaller, but it would still have to pump the same mass of blood.”
She smiles. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll strategically destroy some amount of your cells, making your body light enough for your diaphragm and heart to work effectively.”
My eyes go wide as I exchange another astonished look with my wife.
“Destroy my cells? In my brain, too, destroying my memories, skills, and the reserve of the brain cells that can be co-opted to do something new in the future?”
The scientist shrugs. “Well, sure, you’ll have a harder time recovering from brain damage with fewer co-optable cells, but it’s not like we have a ton of choices.”
“Well…” I consider her words, “touché, doc. Where do we sign?”
~*~
The transition to the smaller size wasn’t difficult, for we were both knocked out during the process, but getting used to it is another story. Everything around us shakes as the “big people” walk around, poking and examining us like we’re lab rats. Well, we are kinda lab rats now, but still!
Our brain isn’t used to our ears and eyes being this small, and so everything sounds and looks weird. Even the food tastes differently now when we’re tiny. Yet soon they also shrink the food, making it palatable once again.
“Errm…” Our familiar scientist comes one day, looking confused or ashamed, and keeping her hands locked behind her. “Well, try not to breathe too much, you two. We just figured that the bacteria and viruses all around us haven’t been shrunk yet, and so they’ll kill you unless we isolate you immediately.
Bacteria? Kill us? I exchange looks with my dear wife. Well, fuck…
~*~
The isolated facility turns out to be a whole shrunk neighborhood. Just recently, I would’ve been amused seeing small houses, gardens, cars, and everything, but now, everything fits my new size.
“Heya, new neighbors!” A man with a big mustache comes closer, cheerfully waving to us. “What did they figure out this time?”
Once again, I exchange looks with my wife.
“That the viruses and bacteria in the air are still their usual size, and so we can’t afford to catch them,” she answers.
Our new neighbor thinks for a second, and then bursts out laughing. “Oh, this is moronic indeed! In my case, they’ve figured that the natural radiation was too much for our shrunken DNA, and so this whole place is shielded. You must ask the other neighbors their stories, lemme tell you!”
He continues to laugh, holding his stomach, but, for some reason, neither my wife nor I shares his enthusiasm.
On the other hand, what else are we to do? If we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying, and so laughing it is!
I try to chuckle, but it barely works. Small steps, I tell myself, you’ll get there. We’ll get there. Eventually, all the problems will be solved, and the whole population will shrink.
At the very least, we no longer contribute to the global problem: we don’t eat much and don’t need much space. And what else can a human hope to do except not contribute to a global problem?
Yet… If the normal-sized humans somehow overpopulated the Earth, what stops the shrunken ones from eventually doing the same?
The End
Anton Anderson, 2026