By Late Night Writings
Finding an entire community in the belly of a gargantuan beast isn’t so rare these days. Anytime I’ve been swallowed up by an immanis crocodylinae duplus, I would rest easy on my trip down its esophagus knowing that I would be sleeping comfortably in the bed of a cozy inn within half an hour. Each time I have been guzzled up by a loxodonta grandis maximus, I've known I’d land in the welcoming arms of a small city whose economy runs on tourism. Whenever I have slurped up by a balaenoptera corporosus inmensus, I've gladly immersed myself in the local culture.
Before the Galactic Scale Reconfiguration, this wouldn’t have been possible. The largest animals on Earth weren’t physically capable of containing even a small village. They weren’t capable of swallowing a small trailer. I doubt a dog house would even fit in there. Looking at pictures from back then - any year prior to the reconfiguration - you can see that their elephants were about the same size as a modern bloodhound. Bloodhounds were about the size of a modern mouse. Of course, not everything was scaled up using the same ratios, so this won’t give you the full picture of how much things have changed, but it does give you a vague idea of how much things have changed. For an example of something that almost didn’t change at all, there’s us. Humans were scaled up so slightly that the percentage of growth is entirely insignificant. It’s not noticeable. Even for the people who were alive during the reconfiguration and therefore experienced the changes, it mostly went unnoticed. Some people may have have just had slightly less trouble reaching the cups on the high shelf, but it made no significant impact on their lives.
Imagine living in a version of our world so small that an eight hour non-stop flight from the East coast of North America to the West coast of the European landmass was considered long. Imagine living in a world where rats were known for being sneaky little rodents that were small enough to be squashed with a pan or small enough to use one of our modern gnat traps. Imagine not knowing you have lice because they’re too small to see when they’re young. These days, lice are as big as our fingers, and there’s no way that you could be uncertain of whether not you had one nestled in your hair. Imagine keeping a parrot in your living room, instead of boarding the windows to keep one from smashing its way in to steal your pet cicada. Back then, there was a completely different set of domesticated animals: dogs, cats, rabbits, a ton of things we see in zoos these days. They were completely different, as you already know, but it’s amazing to imagine seeing miniature versions of those things rolling onto their backs and begging for treats. Think of replacing your mantis with a miniature cat, putting a leash on your cat and walking it about town, or picking up a cat. Even just picturing these things feels silly. Though imagine how people from before the Galactic Scale Reconfiguration would feel about how the world is now. All the bugs that we keep as pets used to be freaks of nature. They would complain about sixteen hour flights. They wouldn’t survive here. The world we live in isn’t for the people who made it. The changes were for the people of the future. This future seemed barbaric and disgusting to them, but we all think it’s pretty good. Moving forward, we have to keep this in mind. We have to remember that changes like the GSR were made for the people of the future and that many of the decisions we make are also for the people of the future. We may not benefit from the changes, we might be terrified by the changes, but the future isn’t for us, so we need to work to build the future that the upcoming generations are demanding. If they end up regretting it, it’s not really on us, and they’ll be able to handle it.
Before the Galactic Scale Reconfiguration, this wouldn’t have been possible. The largest animals on Earth weren’t physically capable of containing even a small village. They weren’t capable of swallowing a small trailer. I doubt a dog house would even fit in there. Looking at pictures from back then - any year prior to the reconfiguration - you can see that their elephants were about the same size as a modern bloodhound. Bloodhounds were about the size of a modern mouse. Of course, not everything was scaled up using the same ratios, so this won’t give you the full picture of how much things have changed, but it does give you a vague idea of how much things have changed. For an example of something that almost didn’t change at all, there’s us. Humans were scaled up so slightly that the percentage of growth is entirely insignificant. It’s not noticeable. Even for the people who were alive during the reconfiguration and therefore experienced the changes, it mostly went unnoticed. Some people may have have just had slightly less trouble reaching the cups on the high shelf, but it made no significant impact on their lives.