Tales of Regression

Chapter 3
Regression Lies

Chapter Description: *This was written by a friend who gave me permission to upload it here!* In an alternate timeline a solar flare from a distant galaxy manages to make its way over to the Milky Way. The radiation from that flare fundamentally altered the human genome. All who tell a lie are temporarily regressed. How much they progress depends on the severity of the lie, among other factors like how old they already are. Could you survive in a world where liars are almost always caught red handed?

Jason Weaver is your typical teenage eighth grader who can't wait to go to high-school after he finishes the school year. He is more of a gangly looking thirteen year old with frazzled looking hair and freckles adorning his face. Based on his height he would sometimes be mistaken for fourteen or fifteen, but usually caught by losing a couple years of age due to lying and telling people he is that old tl try and impress them. 

"Jason! Can you please come down and do the dishes?" He clearly hears his single mothers request as he never keeps his bedroom door closed in case she needs him. 

"I'll be right there! Just need to put my homework away!" Being on the second floor of their house, Jason always has to be slightly loud so his mother can hear him clearly. Pay attention as Jason told a little white lie to his mother. He was in fact not doing his homework, so he will regress. Usually for white lies he tends to regress one or two years because he is highly susceptible to regression.  "Don't forget to close your window!"

During the springtime Jason likes to keep his window open, which sometimes leads to nasty critters getting in when he's not paying attention. To please her he closes the window but begins to feel a very familiar tingly feeling as he heads towards his door. 

"No no no." He whispers to himself as he feels his internal clock rewinding and luckily has an urge to use the restroom. "I'll be down after I use the bathroom!" Luckily his voice sounded about normal. He rushes to the upstairs bathroom to hopefully wait out the regression and age back up. In this world clothing has been specially engineered to shrink with the person being regressed to ensure nobody gets swallowed by their clothes or has any accidents if they regress to a very young age.  "Maybe I'll okay. I hope mom doesn't figure out that I lied." His mother can be a bit strict about lying. If he lies about doing his homework then he is usually forced to lie even more as a form of punishment. Usually she stops him at about  half his age, rounded down. To go from thirteen to six is something that deeply embarrasses him since he would look and sound like a six year old while still having his teenage brains.

"Okay, I'm lucky." As he looks in the mirror he sees that he looks a little under twelve years old. "Hopefully mom won't notice." He sounds a little off as he sits in the bathroom, door closed, for a good couple minutes. One final glance in the mirror shows him looking maybe twelve, so he scurries out and down into the kitchen just off the stairway. 

"I was just about beginning to wonder if you lied to me and didn't want me to see you regress." His mother is at the table chopping up an onion with her favorite knife as he steps in, quietly, and begins doing the dishes. "What homework were you doing?" Jason has to think real hard about his words to not trigger regression. 

"I was just about to start my algebra homework. We're currently going over solving equations by elimination." Luckily for him he was just about to start that worksheet, so that isn't a lie. 

"What were you doing before that?" 

"Watching a video. Our science teacher wants us to take notes. It's about light refraction and prisms." Jason is, for the most part, good at effectively pulling off what is referred to in this dimension as "truthful lying", a common type of lying that doesn't trigger regression as there's technically no lie involved, only deceit. 

"Light is such a funny thing." His mother gets up and takes the cut onion to a medium sized pot on the stove. On a normal weekday there's no way his mother would ever be home around three fourty since she's usually at work until four o'clock. Today is different. "Can you stir this in a couple minutes while I use the restroom?" 

"I can." Jason thinks nothing of his mother leaving the room as he gets the last few plates, bowls, and silverware into the dishwasher and closes it up. He watches over the onion and does stir them before his mother comes back.

"Those onions aren't burnt I see. I also saw no sign of any homework in your room." Jasons heart skips a beat as he freezes in place, his mother closing in on him. "Why did you lie this time Jason?" He scrambles to think if an answer while stuttering. Usually in this panicked state he lies himself down to the age she wants. 

"I didn't mean to I swear. I was actually about to pull out my algebra homework ad begin on it. The video was the one on light and prisms, I just wasn't taken notes yet." With each lie he feels the tingling and soon his mother stops him at around three years old this time, leaving him a sniveling toddler in nothing but a blue and black polo and a pair of training pants. Regression tends to leave some people tired if they rapidly regress. This is what happened to Jason, so he feels pretty tired in his little, slightly pudgy, body. Instinctively she kneels down and picks him up. She takes him to his room as he falls asleep, head on her shoulder, and sets him on his bed. 

"When will you learn." She takes out her phone and snaps a picture of him sleeping like an angel before uploading it to Fakebook. 

So glad to have my baby back, even if it's temporary and even if he's a liar 

She also sends a picture to his friends' mother since he was gonna spend the night there. This is a warning to his friend not to lie and can also be used as fuel for his friend to tease him the next time they see each other since clearly he will probably be using those training pants during his "nappy wappy" time...