Lost Giant Inflation Story

They came to a halt on the high school racing track. Marty was glad they were alone, so the results of the race could be kept quiet.

"Beat you again," said Amy, racing past the finish line.

"I let you win," Marty panted, slowing to a halt.

"Sure," Amy said, barely winded.

"Okay, so I'm not as good an athlete," Marty admitted. "But I'm smarter."

"Oh, please! I'm straight A's and you're straight B's!"

"Look what I discovered in the science lab the other day." With that, Marty puffed up his cheeks. Amy just gave his a quizzical look.

And then his midsection blew out in all directions, rounding out as if a balloon were inflating inside his body. Amy just stared as her friend and competitor inflated like a blimp. He stood in front of her, a round, globular version of himself.

And then she laughed. He smiled back at her, looking over his spherical midsection. "I guess I do look kind of funny," he admitted.

"Oh, it's not that!" she said. "I'm just wondering what took you so long! I learned how to inflate myself a long time ago! And I can get REALLY big!"

"Oh, come of it!" he said, but somewhat embarrassingly. She couldn't possibly be serious, could she?

"Just watch," she said, and she puffed up her cheeks. With less strain than Marty had done it, Amy ballooned up, her chest and torso blimping up into a larger, rounder shape. She kept on blowing until she was nothing but a huge, round balloon-ball, her head and hands all that were visible upon the growing sphere that used to be her human body. Marty looked helplessly upward as she inflated to twice his size. She finally stopped inflating and looked down at him. "Hello, shorty!" she called mockingly at him.

Marty shook off his surprise. "I could be TWICE as big as that!" He puffed and puffed, and again he inflated like a balloon, becoming a huge round ball that swelled until he could see over Amy's head.

"I could be bigger than this whole field!" Amy said, and she puffed and puffed and puffed. She swelled larger and larger and LARGER! Their round bodies collided, and she shoved Marty backwards with her expansion, blowing up like a blimp out of control! Soon, in fact, she was bigger than the whole field!

"I could be bigger than the whole school!" shouted Marty, and he inflated himself more, puffed himself up bigger, until the school building below was dwarfed by his balloon body.

Amy giggled. "I'm just getting started! I'll be bigger than the whole block!" She inflated more, pushing Marty back further as she expanded and grew, toppling over nearby houses as she got impossibly bigger and bigger... and BIGGER!

Crowds of people began to peer out their windows, stop their cars, and drop their current activities to gape at the two huge orbs that seemed to threaten to engulf the whole town. And that's precisely what the two human balloons did.

"I'll be bigger than the whole town!" Marty cried.

"Not if I do it first!" Amy giggled, inflating right along with him.

Higher and higher into the sky they inflated. Fuller and fuller they got. They expanded in every direction, quickly growing larger than the city, the county, and all the nearby townships. Marty and Amy hardly noticed, their heads literally up in the clouds.

"Bigger than the state!" Marty called out.

"Bigger than the whole country!" Amy called back.

The two now could no longer make out the ground below. All they saw were their own inflating bodies, that continued to expand unceasingly into the clouds. Never stopping, they inflated so much bigger... bigger... bigger...BIGGER!!

"Bigger than the continent!" he cried.

"Bigger than an ocean!" she responded.

"Bigger than the sky!"

They called it out at the same time:

"BIGGER THAN THE WORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLD!!!!!"

They both looked up, seeing deep space just above them, the moon seemingly within their grasp! They each inflated bigger, hoping to be the first balloon to be bigger than the Earth! Amy was ahead, inflating just a bit larger than Marty, who wheezed as he struggled to keep up.

"Bigger than the world, Amy!" Marty cried out, his voice barely carrying through the sparse atmosphere. "Watch me! WATCH ME GET BIGGER THAN THE WHOLE WORLD!!!"

Marty expanded into the heavens above him, until--

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!

A sonic blast shook the planet as Marty finally burst!

The sound reverberated across the horizon.

Silence ensued.

And then Amy laughed. She laughed so hard she thought she might pop herself. Her tight, round body shook ominously as she replayed the events in her mind.

"God, was he stupid!" she laughed to himself. "Did he really think he could be bigger than the whole world?! What was he thinking?!" She chuckled again to himself. "Only *I* can be bigger than the world!"

And with that she puffed and puffed himself up bigger... bigger... bigger...

A shadow passed over the Earth as she eclipsed the sun. She swelled beyond the size of the moon, rapidly doubling in size. Then she doubled in size again, in mere minutes. Blimping out into the vastness of space, pushing her planet-sized form farther into the dark, cold sky, Amy screamed in her head a victory cry that no one could hear but every living thing could see:

I'M BIGGER THAN THE WORLD!!!!

The planet sized Amy drifted away from Earth, gravity and dark matter buffeting her into an elliptical orbit that continually shifted position as she grew even larger and larger.

She looked at the unfiltered white light coming from the sun, whose distance from her decreased as her midsection continued to expand. She smiled. The sun is only, what, a few million times bigger than the Earth?

I could be bigger than that, she thought.

The sun, after all, was only a medium-sized star. And she could be bigger than a supergiant!

So she inflated further into space, outgrowing Saturn and Jupiter as the largest celestial body in the solar system. As she swelled, shortening the distance between her and the nearest star, an atmosphere rapidly formed around her Jovian figure. And as the heat from the solar winds struck her, she began to warm up, causing the gasses inside to her to increase her inflation exponentially. Soundlessly, but with the most rapid expansion of matter since the Big Bang, Amy expanded wider and fuller into space for what must have been days or weeks, but time had lost all meaning to her.

Finally, her body began to tremble. But Amy just smiled. She couldn't see how big she'd gotten, but she could feel it, and she just pushed herself even harder, speeding up her inflation as if she could somehow outrun the inevitable result.

Again she screamed in her mind her victory cry:

BIGGER... THAN... THE SUN!!

There was no sound, just a blinding flash of light as Amy went supernova, bursting into molecule-sized space debris.