Chapter 2

Zoe’s mind went blank. She simply couldn’t reconcile what she was seeing with her memories of Miss Beckworth. It was simply impossible. Miss Beckworth had been a small lady, aged sixty-three or something when she herself was ten, her back bent by a long and hard life, her face a map of crow feet and wrinkles, her hair already falling because of the abject poverty she survived through. She did look like a witch and that Godling didn’t at all.

“Yes dear, it’s me. I guess my little improvements are throwing you off a bit, but I assumed you'd love that. You adore strong and curvaceous women, after all,” chuckled the giantess, whose shining blue eyes seemed to glint even more as she smiled, revealing Zoe's private fantasies as if knowing them was the most normal thing. “It’s natural you’d be surprised to see me, even if I think you should have known who owned your company now. I don't hide, after all.”

Zoe’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s out of water did. She was absolutely unable to understand what the Godling was saying, her brain simply refused to accept any words coming from that woman, whose voice was absolutely stranger to the timbre of human voices, in ways she couldn’t even explain, but simply felt wrong. And yet, it was also overpowering, and for Zoe it was exactly how a God’s voice had to sound – or a Goddess in that case.

“Zoe? Are you okay?” asked the Godling, looking somewhat worried now, like someone could be worried about a pet behaving strangely. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but I expected you to be better able to deal with that little revelation. In fact, I can't perceive any reason you'd be so shocked in your future - or your past from the last three years.”

“I… I’m sorry Ma’am, Goddess, uh… your All-Powerfulness?” managed to croak the petite woman, finally managing to get her brain working again – somewhat. “I mean, Miss Beckworth, uh, Godling?”

The giantess laughed, a warm wall of joy which somehow made Zoe wince. The power of that laugh was absolutely stunning, the pure joy it conveyed almost too much for her to take. All her sadness and worries felt particularly petty hearing it and she squirmed a little, wondering if the blond woman knew the way her hilarity affected humans, or if she truly was not able to understand its impact on her former species.

“You can call me Miss Beckworth if you want, but I’d love it if you called me Laurene” she finally said, tilting her head a little and grinning at the small woman. “Really, I’d rather you call me Laurene, Zoe.”

Laurene definitively sounded like a word Zoe would be forever unable to pronounce when it came attached to that impossible being in front of her. It was so mundane, far too human to describe the giantess sitting behind her mighty desk. And even if it hadn’t been, poor little Zoe was definitely too overwhelmed to use it. But going against the wishes of the Godling seemed even more impossible, so it’d have to be Miss Beckworth, no matter how wrong that one also felt.

“As you wish, Miss Beckworth” she managed to mumble, but it seemed the ears of the behemoth were far keener than she expected them to be, as she smiled gently.

“See, it wasn’t that difficult right? Anyway” she continued, gesturing toward the front of her desk. “Take a seat Zoe, I need to review your situation.”

The petite woman frowned. Her worries returned and, more troubling, there was now a chair in front of the desk. A chair fit for her size she could have sworn wasn’t here one second before. She tried to remember if there had been a chair or anything like that when she had first walked into this room, but the memory of the Godling’s radiance – let alone the actual one still very much present - made it hard to focus on such details.

“Come on, sit. I swear that nothing bad will happen to you” beamed Miss Beckworth.

“But if I sit we won’t be able to see each other,” replied Zoe meekly, pointing at the chair which had barely enough space between it and the wall of wood that was the giantess’ desk for the human’s scrawny legs.

“Oh, I’ll be able to see you, but from my experience, it’s better if humans don’t see me when we talk. You’re freer that way, to speak your mind and be less intimidated” explained Miss Beckworth with gentleness. “And I promise you will see more of me at a more… Appropriate place.”

“Oh.”

Zoe guessed it made sense, even if she doubted seeing a part of a desk the size of a little house was truly easing humans in when they interacted with Godlings. Still, she did as she was told, as the office drone she had grown into was accustomed to. She sat and waited for Miss Beckworth to speak. She couldn’t help but wonder why the giantess had told she would still be able to see her. Surely, she couldn’t see through wood? She got a little agitated.

“No need to ruffle around dear” chuckled the Godling, unseen but ever present, freezing Zoe. “Or to be that tense, it’s nothing really.”

“Can you read my mind?” blurted the petite woman, one second before she gasped, horrified by the familiarity she had just used with that giantess. “Miss Beckworth, Ma’am, your, uh, your Totality,” she hastily added, mortified.

“No Zoe, I can't,” laughed the blonde colossus, sounding quite amused. “Or rather I'm not doing it, right now. It really is a bother – I tried it years ago, after the changes I underwent and, frankly, it’s just painful to endure. We all agreed that reading mind was a no-no for us, even discounting the blatant lack of privacy it created. Even insignificant creatures like Humans deserve some privacy. And we don't need it, frankly, if we want to know someone's true self. Anyway, back to business, shall we? I see here you’ve been working in this firm for the last five years?”

“Yes Ma’am” replied Zoe immediately, as old habits die hard. “It’s been my first real job after I, uh, I dropped from college. The pay, it was, uh, good enough for me, since I don’t have, uh, debts and, uh… “

She stopped her futile efforts to try and ignore the change of atmosphere that her words had produced. It shouldn’t have been possible but she could swear that the Godling was annoyed by something and it affected the whole weather in the room. The air felt just like it did before a storm, and Zoe also felt eyes boring into her soul, which made her want to shrink away and hide in any dark place she could find, right now.

“You dropped out of college?”

“I… yes Ma’am but-”

“Miss Beckworth or Laurene, Zoe. Really, Laurene, if you want to make me happy. Please,” cut her off the giantess, whose tone softened a little compared to the very stern voice she had had a second before. “And no need to be afraid or worried. I’m not judging you. I won’t lie and say I’m not disappointed in you, because I know for certain you had the ability to succeed in college, but you have to have had your reasons for it. Still, when did you drop out?”

“After the first semester of my first year, Miss Beckworth” mumbled Zoe, shame turning her face redder than a tomato.

“I see. And this was your first work here, when you were 26 years old. What did you do during those years between your dropping out and the start of your career here?”

Zoe really didn’t want to answer that. It’d brought back terrible memories, the sides of which still felt as sharp and jagged as daggers. She wanted to avoid thinking about her past at all cost. What Ron had done to her, how it had eaten her away and broken her forever. But there was something in the Godling’s voice, a form of authority which couldn’t be denied. Trying to not answer was simply too much for any human’s willpower.

So Zoe spoke. She spoke about those months, and then years, spent inside her room, unable to get out, crying from dusk till dawn, and sleeping away the days, only to repeat that cycle, again and again, as her parents failed to understand how to help her, if they even could to begin with. How she had been unable to tell them about Ron and how her secret shame had eaten her away until she felt unable to get up and go to college, one day. This, and more, she told Miss Beckworth.

“Oh darling” sighed the giantess, and Zoe suddenly felt as if a gentle, soft and warm embrace surrounded her fragile body, even with no one around her. “I wish I could erase all this pain and unmake those events, but even I can’t do that. It happened before my Awakening and it made you who you are today, who you were three years ago. It's the one thing I can’t just wave away, I'm truly sorry about it, Zoe.”

“It’s ok” mumbled Zoe, just then realizing that she was crying, her voice wreaked by sobs she hadn’t even realized she had released. “It’s over now, I’m working here and I like that. It's good to be an office drone, to not have to seen. To… to be invisible and forgotten…”

It was true, after a fashion. She didn’t like her work in itself, mindless and easily replaced by actual drones created by the Godlings – after all, if they had escaped an early joblessness, it was entirely because the giants and giantesses had been focusing their prodigious minds toward the more difficult or dangerous jobs, the ones who could maim or crush or kill a worker. And they had also devised a way to avoid resistance to the changes they wanted to make. Still, Zoe knew her work could have been done better by some of their machines from day one.

“And why do you like that? From what I’ve seen in everyone's Lives, you don’t socialize much, and you almost never leave your cubicle, and yet you never seem to deviate from your missions, not even a little. Why is that?”

“I… I don’t feel at ease with people, Mi… Miss Beckworth. And uh, it’s easy to get lost in the routine here, and when I do, I uh, my thoughts aren’t focused on what hurts me, you see?”

Zoe truly felt pathetic explaining it, and she looked miserably at her lap. What a display to give to someone who had endured abject poverty only to be transfigured into a goddess! She wasn’t jealous at all of Miss Beckworth, the very idea of having so much power horrified her, but Zoe couldn’t help but feel self conscious. She probably looked like a remarkably pathetic existence to the giantess. And somehow it made her really sad.

“Well, that’s something we will work on in your future. You can’t spend your whole life running away from yourself Zoe. It just won’t do” stated Miss Beckworth, with her strange voice which seemed far more fitted to booming commandments than such a mundane – if life-changing – discussion. “But let’s not rush things out, I know it makes you humans get a little lost, what with the way you perceive time and all.”

“E… E…Excuse me, Miss Beckworth, but what do you mean?” asked Zoe, who was truly confused about the absence of option in the giantess’ words – and what was that bit about time and perception?

“Well, dear, you humans are beings of four dimensions, really. Height, depth, width and time, basically. Even if time is debatable as you can only move forward, not backward. Us Godlings we… well we have transcended those limitations – for limitations they are. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say we live in at least 12 dimensions, and possibly far more, we seem to discover a new one every three months, since the moment of our change onward. So, really, the space-time continuum, for us, is very much like you’d picture a straight line on a paper: not very impressive.”

Zoe gawked. She couldn’t help it. Miss Beckworth was saying something absolutely mind-blowing, disproving all the naysayers who continued to pretend that Godlings were just bigger, smarter humans, and she did so as if it was nothing. She was basically telling her that she was nothing more than words on a page compared to the reality of her, Miss Beckworth. That idea was utterly crushing for her ego.

And yet. And yet she couldn’t help but feel something stir in her. If she was truly next to nothing compared to the almighty being who had been an old lady three years ago, a lifetime away, then couldn’t she give herself to Miss Beckworth? Couldn’t she let that superior being make her choices for her, freeing her of the pain and aches of being a human being, independent and with its own troubles? Couldn't she become a puppet, a writing on the notebook of the Godling's life? Abdicate all her nature as a subject of life to become a mere object, protected from pain?

She didn’t truly understand those ideas. Whence did they come from, and how could she even consider giving up her freedom of choice so easily. She felt torn apart, and her breathing became ragged, as the implications of what Miss Beckworth was saying truly weighed on her. And then it all stopped. She blinked; wondering why she was agitated like that and then even that feeling simply ceased to exist and she asked the question she wanted to ask after hearing the Godling. The last thing she remembered was that Miss Beckworth wanted to work on her life.

“Excuse me, Miss Beckworth, but what do you mean?”

She confusedly felt as if she had already asked that question, but in relation to something else. Still, this sensation dissipated, just as easily and promptly as if she had erased a paragraph on word and it had simply never existed – or at least she’d have felt that way if she had been able to realize what the Godling had just done, without any difficulty. Instead, she just waited nervously for an explanation from Miss Beckworth.

“You’re a good woman, darling” slowly explained the giantess, who somehow sounded both contrite and amused by something Zoe couldn’t grasp. “It may sound condescending, but it matters more to me than skills or anything like that, because humans and us Godlings operate in two vastly different worlds, so to speak. It doesn’t mean that I like you being wasted in such a thankless job. I want you to be happy, Zoe. It’d truly mean the world to me to help you, and, well, ever since I changed, I realized I could decide to not take no as an answer, when I know the person deserves a better life.”

“So… so, uh when you said you were disappointed, uh, it was because…”

“Because I want what’s best for you. I truly do. Perhaps it’s hard to understand, but us Godlings exist to make you humans happier, healthier. It’s… it’s just something we knew from the very moment we changed. We want what’s best for you all, as a species and as individuals. Dealing with billions of people may seem impossible but, if you pardon my arrogance, it’s working for us. And thus, for you. And Earth isn’t that populated anyway so it's really an absence of efforts on our part to do, well, Everything here.”

That did sound very arrogant, and if someone else had said that, Zoe would have scoffed – at least internally. But there was something in the otherworldly voice of Miss Beckworth which made it quite clear that she was telling the truth, plain and simple. That seemed ridiculous because surely Zoe would have heard about Godlings meeting everyone on Earth. Something she managed to utter, with stutters and sorries.

“That, uh, that all seems a little… impossible to believe, Miss Beckworth, Ma’am.”

“I understand why you’d think that but we have ways for it to be both true and unknown to everyone. In fact, I can tell you that barring you, none of the other employees will even realize they’ll be speaking to me. But they still leave the building with a newfound sense of direction and respect for other peoples, when the latter is lacking.”

“Bu… but, why me, Miss Beckworth?”

“Laurene. Come on, try it, it’s just a name, it won’t hurt or feel inadequate to call me by that name. And to answer your question, because it’s you, Zoe. Out of all the humans in this whole world, all the living beings in this minuscule Universe, you were the one I wanted to help openly, to repay the kindness you gave me when you had no reason to. Because I want you to be happy and now, I can make it so. And because, well, I have other reasons.”

The last words had been said so fast Zoe almost wondered if she had imaged them. From the way she had spoken, she could almost picture the Godling nibbling her lower lips, like an enamoured teenager. Which was obviously ridiculous, for so many reasons she couldn’t really list them; but her brain decided to do that list, of course, no matter how much she wanted it to stop.

For starters, she was too plain and small, with nothing of worth to her name, not even her physique. Ron had done what he had done to her because he wanted to assert dominance on someone who had always opposed him, in spite of their size difference, not because he found her attractive – no one seemed to. He had been quite clear about it and had mocked her even as he ravished her body for his please.

Furthermore, she was a human while Miss Beckworth was a Godling, another species entirely. And, of course, there was the sheer size difference between them. Speaking of vast differences, their ages were also a problem. Miss Beckworth had been old before and while she now looked younger than herself, she still could remember Zoe as a young girl, which should have made her uncomfortable.

“Your silence is telling me you’re worried about it all, Zoe” said the voice of Miss Beckworth in her ear, startling her so much she fell from the chair, only to be gently cuddled by immense fingers. “No need to be that jumpy” chuckled the giantess who may as well have appeared out of thin air. “But I understand that you’d be startled, I tend to forget the limitations of humans from time to time” she added – but the voice came from beyond the desk now, and before she knew what was happening, Zoe was lifted up, and up and up, until she saw two Miss Beckworth beaming at her.

“How…” was all she managed to gasp, absolutely stunned.

“Well, I told you that my kind lives in other dimensions, many things impossible to yours are mundane tasks for us” replied the two giantesses in unison. “And it’s just a taste of what I want to share with you, if you want to partake in it, Zoe. But seriously, wouldn’t you say my name, once?”

“I… okay, uh, Miss… uh… Laurene” meekly replied Zoe, and her world was changed forever by that one name.