As time passed he became aware that something was terribly wrong. Things, objects, were all out of kilter, out of proportion and in false perspective. Why should weeds, or reeds, look like trees to him? Unless?

Blade did not believe it. He did not want to believe it. The computer had played strange tricks before, but this? Was he a Tom Thumb, reduced in size to a minikin? Or was he still his normal self and had landed in a dimension where everything was so massive that he was dwarfed?

It was much worse than that. So far he had not moved a muscle, he stared straight ahead of him and a bit upward. Now he tried to flex his muscles. Nothing much happened. His fingers moved and his fist clenched and relaxed, but there was no strength. He was as weak and uncoordinated as a baby.

Blade looked at his hand. It was small and pink and chubby. Tiny. He was a baby. The computer had reduced him to an infant.

In body only. For that Blade was grateful even as the curses formed in his brain. He damned the computer and Lord L and J and the gods and himself for a fool. And found some satisfaction therein. His brain was all right, unchanged, crystal and all. He was Richard Blade still, but his tiny pink body was that of a newborn babe.

He tried to raise his head. Too heavy. He could not even move it. That made sense, if any of this made sense, because his brain was full grown and must be housed in the cranium of a full grown man. He must be a hell of a looking sight, Blade thought. A macrocephalic horror. Whoever found him would probably kill him on sight and either stuff him or preserve him in a bottle. Monster babe.

Survival. How to live, how to beat this nasty turn of events? Think, Blade. Think harder than you have ever thought in your life. For this is it! This is all the trouble there is and the worst, the most dangerous, spot you have ever been in. Think. Because only your brain can save you now, the brain so seared, and distorted and twisted and restructured. Think fast, Blade!