Smaller by the Day

Daniel and friends discover a horrifying secret they share with the world.

Daniel Straiten had always loved the Earth not in the abstract, “save the planet” way, but in the tangible, gritty appreciation of tectonic plates and mantle convection. Where others saw hills and oceans, Daniel saw stress lines and crustal anomalies. By day, he was a high school science teacher in rural Wyoming. But by night and most weekends he led Earth’s Vanguard, a small online group of geological hobbyists, data nerds, and armchair futurists.

It was his refuge from loneliness. A core group of six, scattered across time zones, but bonded by seismic charts and strange satellite anomalies, logged on each Saturday to share notes, compare models, and chase the improbable.

Until one Saturday, the improbable answered back.

Daniel’s seismic alert pinged just as he was sharing his screen. Across the video chat, Nia from Iceland raised an eyebrow. “That from Yellowstone?”

“Nope,” Daniel murmured, already scanning data. “It’s global. Look tectonic strain readings just dipped. Everywhere.”

“Wait,” said Ramesh from Bangalore, “I’m seeing the same drop on crustal pressure sensors. That’s impossible. Those don’t all dip at once.”

“I’m checking the satellite altimetry feed,” chimed in Yuri from Kazakhstan. “Sea level is rising, but without added volume. That only happens when…”

“...the radius of the Earth decreases,” Daniel finished, breath catching in his throat.

The channel fell silent.

No one laughed.

Within twenty-four hours, they confirmed the impossible. Every GPS satellite, every long-term atmospheric model, every deep core pressure sensor all showed the same thing.

The Earth was shrinking.

Day 1

They calculated the contraction rate: 1.3 millimeters in radius per day.

It sounded small. But it wasn’t.

A shift that consistent, global, and persistent wasn’t natural. It wasn’t plate tectonics, or isostatic rebound, or subduction acceleration. This was something else.

Nia started combing through gravimetric anomalies. Ramesh dove into historical geologic records. Yuri brought in archived neutrino detection logs. What they found was chilling.

The shrinkage had started five years ago. Slowly. Microscopic at first. Too small to notice. But it was accelerating.

And worst of all: the loss wasn’t just in size. The mass of the planet was decreasing too.

Day 5

They uploaded a video to every platform they could access. A simple, sobering message.

“We believe Earth is losing mass at a rate that cannot be explained by any known geological process. Our days are shortening. Our orbit will begin to decay. Tides will shift. The biosphere is already responding. We urge all scientists to examine our findings. This is not a hoax. This is real. And if it continues…”

They didn’t finish that sentence.

The video went viral.

The mocking came fast of course it did. Tin foil hats. Flat Earth jokes. Hashtag: #EarthSlimmingChallenge.

Then the days started getting shorter.

By measurable seconds.

Day 12

Mainstream scientists finally confirmed it. The Earth was now 17 millimeters smaller in radius than it had been two weeks prior. Mass loss estimates exceeded 14 quadrillion tons.

That’s when governments began to panic.

News outlets talked about "anomalous planetary entropy." Pop stars hosted benefit concerts for "our shrinking home." Billionaires offered lunar escape lottery tickets.

But Earth’s Vanguard kept digging.

Because they had found something else.

A signature.

Buried in the neutrino background noise was a pattern oscillating, rhythmic, deliberate. Not natural. Not human.

A kind of gravitational siphon, perhaps. Focused and precise.

Something or someone was draining the Earth.

Day 18

They called it “The Harvester.”

A cosmic scale device. A gravity well amplifier, quantum levered, impossible by human standards. But it fit the data.

And it wasn’t the first time.

Mars, Daniel realized, had similar unexplained density shifts in its history. So had Mercury. Even Pluto showed mass decay inconsistent with impact theories.

Earth, it seemed, was just next in line.

But the Harvester was invisible operating in dimensions we couldn’t see, threading spacetime like a needle. And it was accelerating its feed.

Day 22

Rotational speed increased. A day now lasted only 22 hours.

Satellites began to drift from orbit. Weather spiraled out of control. Tidal zones collapsed.

Panic gripped the planet.

Daniel sat alone in his house, watching the world unravel through a cracked window. He hadn’t slept in two days. Not since Nia went silent. Her last message was just one word:

“Moving.”

Earth’s Vanguard, scattered and hunted now, had split into survival factions. Some believed they could reverse the siphon with resonant frequencies. Others wanted to build arks. Daniel?

He believed in telling the truth.

Day 27

He uploaded one final message.

“We are being consumed by a force older than our species, older than our Sun. We don’t know if it's automated or intentional. But we are not the first. We won’t be the last. Maybe we are a farm. Or a fuel source. Or just a number in some vast equation. But know this we were here. We noticed. And we resisted, in the only way we knew how. With knowledge.”

He hit SEND.

Outside, the sun blinked slightly as atmospheric drag flared against satellites crashing in unison.

Day 30

The Earth was three meters smaller in radius.

Rotational day: 19 hours.

Gravitational force: 96% of original value.

Daniel walked outside for the last time. The stars looked…wrong. Tilted. Shifted. Even they were moving away.

And in the sky, above the mountains, a shimmer barely perceptible hung like a mirage.

As if something vast, and dark, and cold was drinking the planet through a straw threaded through spacetime itself.

Daniel smiled, then whispered to no one:

“We saw you.”

And vanished into a shrinking world.


Written for:

FORUM

The Writer's Cramp  (13+) Write the best poem or story in 24 hours or less and win 10K GPS! #333655 by Sophy

Prompt: Write a story or poem about what happens when the earth starts to shrink in size, a little more every day. What is causing it? How small does it get? Is there a solution?
Word count: 925