Name: Shrink Files 55: Shrinking Brain Drain
Brand: ShrinkingMen
Price: 2.49 GBP
Availability: InStock

A 33-page illustrated story of mind control and brain drain. He walked in the cleverest man in the room. He'll leave able to say one word, and mean it with his whole body.

The story

Elliot has three letters after his name and a twenty-year habit of being the smartest man in any room he enters. So when a discreet, unmarked listing invites him to a private trial, cognitive bandwidth transfer, he turns up ready to correct the terminology.

The man running it is Dane: six-foot-three of leather, muscle and slow cigar smoke. Kneeling by the window is Kyle, a blond mountain of devotion who once held a doctorate in number theory and now counts happily to the only number he has left. One.

There's a form to sign. Redistribution of measured capacity. Not, in the relevant respects, reversible. Everyone reads it twice. Nobody reads it three times, because past a point, the reading stops being the thing you're for.

Shrinking Brain Drain is the slow, ecstatic unmaking of a brilliant man: every clever light switched off one room at a time, every lost word a fresh wave of warmth, every inch he shrinks making the giants above him bigger. By the end he can't read his own name, can't add two and two, can't build a sentence longer than his, and he's never, in his whole crowded life, been so happy. You'll want to be next.

From the story

"Two," the man said, "and two. How many's that. Count them if it helps."
The small one put up two on one hand. He put up two on the other. He looked at them. He knew — the ember knew — that there was an answer, that the answer was easy, that children had this answer, that he had once carried numbers in his head the size of rooms — and he looked at the four small fingers and the answer was not there. His lips moved. "Two," he said. "And. Two." A long pause. The labouring. "...Lots," he said, finally, hopeful — and the man laughed, a real laugh, warm and delighted, up the wall.