Take-out fried chicken

Upon returning to the room, Rob believed his experiment to be a failure. It was apparent there were no chickens in the room and no ants in the test chamber.

Going to his desk, he tossed his phone at the ceiling fan in frustration and froze. Floating down from the fan were miniature birds. A close look reveled them to be 4 hens and a rooster. Specifically the species of chicken he had selected. They were still small, but they were chickens.

Realizing the problem, Robert could tell that conservation of mass was still an issue. He wouldn't be able to save the world from hunger by turning the insect population of the world into full size food.

Feeling hungry he called for takeout after collecting the birds.

Still this was science and he needed to observe the test subjects. Several weeks passed and the chickens never grew as they were initially turned into full adult aged chickens. Using a doll house as a roost Robert had actually started to breed the flock. The new chicks also only grew to the size of the the previous generation, but only took 2 days to hatch and a month to grow.

After the first batch of chickens, Robert had also turned several more ants into chicks. They only grew proportionally to their starting size, but took 4 days to hatch and a bit longer to grow to adulthood.

The other thing he realized was that he could only make things smaller as he could transform excess weight into waste air but not in reverse.

A small zoo had started to appear in Robert's lab over the next 10 months. He had managed to make miniature animals for hundreds of different animals and fantasy creatures while he refined the portable MAU and his MAU app. His prized creations were palm sized cuddly lizard type tyrannosaurus rexes that matched the old unfeathered appearance and several dragons.

Keeping an eye on the news, it seems that the criminals that had previously stolen the "portable" MAU had been caught living under new identities. The MAU only ever partially recovered as the parts Robert didn't have were what allowed the criminals to be traced in the first place.

It seems that the breadboards Robert had collected were going to be retired soon anyway and were tossed as trash before the guy running the yard sale got them dumpster diving.

A new "portable" MAU unit had been announced after the criminals were caught. This was still a clunky over sized chamber that needed to be wheeled places. Robert's MAU app was as functional as all his tests were still showing positive results. His drone mounted MAU was just as functional.

Robert was ready to make some final tests before moving onto full human testing. He loaded up several scans he made around the office to the drone before zapping a palm sized zebra.