Too Small For Tall Read online

  TOO SMALL FOR TALL

  Aaron Rosenberg

  Digital Edition published by Crazy 8 Press and Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2013 / Aaron Rosenberg

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Aaron Rosenberg is the award-winning, bestselling author of the humorous science fiction novel No Small Bills, the space-opera series The Dread Remora, the occult thriller Indefinite Renewal, and many more. He's written tie-in novels (including the PsiPhi winner Collective Hindsight for Star Trek: SCE, the Daemon Gates trilogy for Warhammer, Tides of Darkness and (with Christie Golden) the Scribe-nominated Beyond the Dark Portal for WarCraft, Hunt and Run for Stargate: Atlantis, and Substitution Method and The Road Less Traveled for Eureka), children's books (including an original series, Pete and Penny's Pizza Puzzles, and work for PowerPuff Girls and Transformers Animated), roleplaying games (including original games like Asylum and Spookshow, the Origins Award-winning Gamemastering Secrets, and sections of The Supernatural Roleplaying Game, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and The Deryni Roleplaying Game), young adult novels (including the Scribe-winning Bandslam: The Novel and books for iCarly and Ben10), short stories, webcomics, essays, and educational books. He has ranged from mystery to speculative fiction to drama to comedy, always with the same intent—to tell a good story. You can visit him online at gryphonrose.com or follow him on Twitter at gryphonrose.

  Book List

  Fiction

  DuckBob

  No Small Bills

  Too Small for Tall

  O.C.L.T.

  O.C.L.T.: Incursion

  O.C.L.T.: Digging Deep (forthcoming)

  Tales of the Scattered Earth

  Birth of the Dread Remora: A Tale of the Scattered Earth.

  Honor of the Dread Remora: A Tale of the Scattered Earth. (forthcoming)

  Licensed Properties

  DaemonGate Trilogy, Book One: The Day of the Daemon

  DaemonGate Trilogy, Book Two: The Night of the Daemon

  DaemonGate Trilogy, Book Three: The Hour of the Daemon

  Eureka: Roads Less Traveled. (under the house name Cris Ramsay)

  Eureka: Substitution Method. (under the house name Cris Ramsay)

  Exalted: The Carnelian Flame

  StarCraft: The Queen of Blades

  Stargate Atlantis: Hunt and Run

  World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal

  World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness

  Star Trek S.C.E.: Aftermath

  Star Trek S.C.E.: Collective Hindsight, Book I

  Star Trek S.C.E.: Collective Hindsight, Book II

  Star Trek S.C.E.: Creative Couplings, Book I

  Star Trek S.C.E.: Creative Couplings, Book II

  Star Trek S.C.E.: The Riddled Post

  Young Adult Novels

  42: The Jackie Robinson Story: The Movie Novel

  Alpha & Omega: The Junior Novel

  Bandslam: The Novel

  Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Chill for a Day

  Chaotic: The Khilaian Sphere

  iCarly Goes to Japan: The Junior Novel

  iTwins/iSaved Your Life

  Nutcracker: The Junior Novel

  Children's Books

  KnightStar: Knight of the Starborne

  Lego Star Wars: Anakin, Space Pilot

  Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles #1: Case of the Secret Sauce

  Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles #2: Case of the Topsy-Turvy Toy

  Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles #3: Case of the Book Burglar

  Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles #4: Case of the Sinking Circus

  Powerpuff Girls Continuity Chapter Book #16: Bubbles in the Middle

  Transformers Animated: Attack of the Dinobots

  Transformers Animated: Bumblebee vs. Meltdown

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  Chapter One

  If I wanted one of those, I’d order it

  Tall is trying to kill me.

  No, he really is.

  Oh, sure, he calls it something else:

  “Exercise.”

  Yeah, right.

  I call it “Tall shouting and screaming at me like my step-dad used to, and making me run around and do jumping jacks and a lot of other hideous and evil things designed to kill me by making my heart burst out of my chest and dance the watusi around the room.”

  When I tell him that, he just laughs at me.

  And then yells at me to get off my fat butt and do some pushups.

  Have you ever tried to do pushups when your bill sticks out past your elbow? It ain’t fun. I can manage the full extension part, but dropping back down I get stuck halfway. And trying to lever yourself up when your arms are already partially extended? Not fun.

  Once he realized the pushups weren’t going to work, Tall switched to sit-ups.

  Uh huh.

  Most people, they’ve got maybe half their weight above the waistline. Me? Two-thirds. And half of that is my head. Hey, duckbills aren’t light! So here I am, lying on my back on the floor, Tall standing over me yelling, and he wants me to lift around a hundred and sixty pounds using just my stomach muscles? Even if they got out and pushed that’s not going to happen!

  “Don’t you want to get in shape?” he demands. “Don’t you want to look good and feel good?” That expression that flits across his granite features is supposed to be sly, I think, but when you’ve got the same face as Mt. Rushmore (he’s got Lincoln’s jaw and brow but Washington’s nose) it’s tough to manage the subtle stuff. “Don’t you want to look good for Mary?”

  Okay, that’s low. “Mary likes me just fine the way I am,” I reply from the floor. Y’know, it’s surprisingly comfortable down here. I guess that’s because instead of carpet it’s actually like grass or little fuzzy caterpillars or something, so laying on it you feel like you’re getting a massage from a thousand fingers all at once. Small, soft, squishy fingers.

  Right, getting up now. Ick.

  “Look, I’m trying to help you,” he says, and the funny thing is, I know he means it. We didn’t start out as friends—hell, I’m pretty sure Tall started out thinking of me as something between a juvenile delinquent, a lab rat, and a loaded gun—but during our trip across the galaxy, well, we kinda bonded.

  What can I say? I’m a people person.

  “I’m just not built like you,” I tell him, limping over to the couch and plopping down on it. “You’re, like, modeled after a Greek god or something. I take after Mr. Potato Head. Or Donald Duck.” All of which is more or less true. Tall’s a MiB, a Man in Black, and I guess they’ve got even tougher entry requirements than the FBI or any of those agencies people actually know about, both mentally and physically. You’ve gotta be in good shape to chase after little green men, or something. But I met a few other MiBs and Tall could probably take ’em all on in arm-wrestling, using only his pinkie, and still win. While distracted. And feverish. He’s not only tall, he’s got the broad shoulders, the thick upper arms, but then the narrow waist and the long legs—he’s like an Olympic athlete, if they had an event for skulking and brooding and shooting things.

>   Me? Even without the whole duck-head thing going on, I was never like that. I’m a decent height, but I was always a little on the doughy side. Having all this happen to me hasn’t really changed that any. If anything, I’m more sedentary now—I figure I lied, cheated, snuck, stole, conned, fought, and fled my way across the galaxy, battled a race of invaders from another dimension, restored the Matrix, and saved our entire reality. That’s gotta be enough exercise for anyone. I deserve to take it easy after all that.

  Still, I can see this is killing him. “I appreciate your concern,” I promise him, and I really do. It’s nice to know he cares, if in a gruff and borderline homicidal fashion. “But don’t worry about it. I’m comfortable with who I am and how I look.” I am, too. That’s why I didn’t have the Grays change me back after the whole invasion thing, despite their offer. Who wants to go back to being just another pudgy guy with a weak chin and pug nose and watery blue eyes and a receding hairline? I’m resplendent in my feathers, my coloration is striking—once literally, when I found out that the people from Rasmussen Nine-Five-One actually experience physical pain from bright colors, and accidentally knocked out an amiable pair of floating noodles who’d come to see if I wanted a magazine subscription—and I’ve never met anyone else who looks even remotely like me, at least away from a duck pond. I’ll take that over “pudgy and boring” any day.

  Besides which, Mary does like my looks. And my feathers. Hey, once you’ve slept on down, you never go back!

  And then there’s the job. As the Matrix’s Guardian and “sentient operator”—read here, “living component”—my staying plugged into it via the Mad Scientist wired headband Ned whipped up keeps it running, which in turn keeps the universe balanced and safely sealed from outside intrusion. But I couldn’t do that if I got changed back to the old me—it’s the fact that the Grays had altered me that made me suitable to be the human plug-in in the first place. Give that up and I’ve got to go back to Earth and find another boring, normal job, probably another cubicle somewhere. I think that’d kill me.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Tall drops onto the couch beside me. “Fine, we’ll call it quits for today, but this isn’t over. In the meantime, when you run out of breath climbing the stairs, or drop a jar of pickles because they’re too heavy for you to manage, don’t come crying to me.” He gives me one last chance. “Come on, just a little more today. Three months and you’ll have a six-pack and killer guns, I guarantee it.”

  “Dude, if I want a six-pack I’ll just order one, and I hate guns. Besides, who would see it under all these feathers? But thanks.”

  “What about swimming?” he suggests. “You’re good at swimming, right?”

  “Yeah.” And it’s true. Hell, with these webbed feet and the feathers, I could probably outrace Michael Phelps—hell, I could probably get to the end, double back, stop to do a quick water ballet routine, and still beat him. Though that might come across as gloating, I’m not sure. There’s just one problem. “You see a pool around here anywhere?”

  “Oh. Right.” He actually looks abashed, which is pretty funny on him—it’s like a dragon after a major browbeating. But the thing is, he’s knows I’m right. Being Guardian of the Matrix is a cool gig, and looks great on a resume, but it’s very much on-location—as in, I’m actually wired into the damn thing at all times. And even with the tether our tech-buddy Ned rigged up, I still can’t leave the Matrix building. Which is odd and sparkly and pink—and doesn’t have a pool.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I scoop up the remote. “Now, you wanna watch the game, or what?”

  “Who’s playing again?” He eyes the remote warily—after that one time, he tends to steer clear of the tech around here. Hey, I warned him to stroke it before trying to push any of its buttons. It’s sensitive. And it gives off one hell of a shock.

  “The Yarmoths versus the Ma-bin-yo.”

  “Right. And what’re those, exactly?” It does get hard to keep track sometimes.

  “The Yarmoth are those little guys that look like they’re made of marshmallows and toothpicks but can melt anything with a touch,” I remind him. “The Ma-bin-yo are the ones that look like emo Goths drawn by a six-year-old with sticky fingers, purple crayons, and a lot of glitter.”

  Tall shakes his head. “I don’t know how you can keep all those straight.” He glares at me for a second. “Especially when you can’t remember which temperature to use for laundry.”

  What? You’ve never gotten confused and washed reds—and maybe a few whites—on hot before? So his shirt shrank a little. And turned sort of a tie-dyed pink. It was a whole new look for him. That was the last time Tall brought his laundry over—now he does it at home or something, though I suspect he has his mom do it for him. If he has a mom. It’s possible he was born from a granite quarry, a chisel, and an overly ambitious sculptor.

  “Different kinds of knowledge,” is all I tell him. “I’ve got a vast capacity for useless trivia.” Which is true. It’s why I’m so good at Trivial Pursuit. That and whenever I’m not sure about an answer I go with either “Whistler’s mother,” “the Himalayas,” “butterflies,” or “The War of 1812.” You’d be surprised how far you can get with just those four.

  We turn on the game and settle in to watch for a bit. There’re over a thousand different televised sports in the galaxy, it turns out, and I can get all of them here. One of the advantages of being “the guardian of the Matrix”—I’m at the very Core of the galaxy, smack dab in the middle of everything, so I’ve got phenomenal reception. There’s always a game on somewhere.

  And, oddly enough, most of them look an awful lot like football. Oh, the uniforms change, and the fields, and the balls, and the use of additional weaponry, but underneath, they all boil down to the same thing—Team A is trying to get past Team B to score points, and then Team B tries the same thing with Team A. As long as you don’t try to remember all the smaller rules and especially all the penalties, you’re fine.

  But Tall’s not really into it today. Usually he gets psyched—he picks a team, more or less at random, and roots for them, and he gets pretty vocal about it, cursing out the other team and threatening their lives and waving his pistol about and the whole bit. Kinda reminds me of the sports bar I went to back in college, only without the cigarette smoke. Today, though, he’s just staring at the screen, and even when a dozen of the Yarmoths surround this one poor Ma-bin-yo and swarm all over him, melting holes through his torso until he looks like he’s made of Silly String, Tall doesn’t react.

  “You okay there, amigo?” I ask gently—gently because he is armed, and I’ve seen him punch reflexively. That poor old lady just picked the wrong time to ask directions, is all.

  He sighs, and starts to nod, then turns it into a shrug, which then becomes a shake of the head. Yeah, he’s off his game. Either that or he’s developed palsy overnight. “I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s just—work’s been getting me down lately.”

  “Work?” I click off the game—this is way more interesting. Tall’s usually real close-mouthed about his job, which I get—without being all spooky and secretive the MiBs are just undertakers with sunglasses and guns. Which could be cool, actually, but not the same thing. So if he wants to tell me something about being a MiB, I’m all ear canals. “Do tell,” I urge. “Lay your troubles at my feet, my friend, and I’ll happily squash them flat.” I wave one pontoon-sized webbed foot at him. “Free of charge.”

  He sighs, and for a second I think damn, he’s gonna clam up again like always. But then he starts talking. And once he starts, it’s like he’s never going to stop.

  Chapter Two

  The end of the world—in triplicate

  “The first few weeks I was back,” Tall began, “everything was fine. It was all ‘Agent Thomas, good job,’ and ‘Agent Thomas, nice to have you back,’ and “Agent Thomas, damn fine work.’”

  “That’s swell for this Thomas dude,” I cut in, “but what’s that got to do with you?”


  He glares at me again—Tall’s really good at glaring. Especially at me. He’s got lots of practice. I can almost feel a bruise right between my eyes when he does it, like he’s added a little lead shot to his stare somehow. Must be a MiB thing. Either that, or he’s wearing contacts.

  “I’m Agent Thomas, you numbskull,” he hisses—yes, he’s actually an expert at hissing intelligibly between his teeth. You read about people hissing things all the time in cheesy novels, but really? If you actually try it, most of the time all you can manage is “sssssssss” or maybe “ssssssssssaaaaaayyyyyyy” or ever once in a great while “sssssssssssaaaaaasssssssssssssaaafraaaaassssssssss.” Me? Forget about it, I can’t hiss at all. When I try it’s just a spatterfest, spit flying everywhere. But Tall, he can actually make full words, complete sentences, the whole bit, all without moving his jaw or parting his teeth. I think he’s cheating—maybe he’s got a speaker built into a molar or something.

  But I admit, I forgot his actual name is Roger Henry David Thomas. Apparently his parents couldn’t decide between a bunch of first names, so they gave him all of them at once. I just call him Tall, sometimes to his face. He says it’s not the worst nickname he’s ever had, not by a long shot.

  “Anyway,” he continues, “eventually things calmed back down, people sort of forgot what we’d done, and everything went back to normal. Which was fine by me. I don’t particularly like getting that much attention.” Which shows just one of the many differences between Tall and me—I love attention. The good kind, anyway. I’ve had plenty of unwanted attention, from bill collectors to bird fanciers to nosy bosses to those people who just won’t look away or pretend to be asleep on the subway. Give me somebody who tells me how awesome I am and how I’ve saved the universe, I’ll happily take second and third helpings of that and come back for more, and diet of humble pie be damned!