Chronology

Chapter 1
04:07 pm

Chapter Description: The end draws near for Matt...

04:07 pm

“I’m going to call the company medics. Before it’s too late” Jeff said. I wasn’t really listening to him though. I couldn’t help staring at the head of a baby sticking up out of the collar of a blue and white stripped T-shirt that was now too big. Matt hated that shirt, but not as much as he must have been hating his new body right then. Scientist, cynic, bully, occasional insightful inspiration. Reduced to a one and a half year old. The humiliation was shocking that it was warping my mind to think about it. Him thinking about it could snap his mind in two. Send it spiraling over the cliff of rational thought and into the pit of insanity, anger and despair. Of course I could stop thinking about it, him, maybe, if I turned away and shut down my thoughts. He couldn’t help thinking about being an infant. He was one. Not just metaphorically for once. It was a phenomenon. One of those phenomenons, like the fact that a tsunami could leave an entire town in ruins, that everyone hated afterwards. Hated it because it was so powerful. So astonishingly destructive that it deserved to be called a “Disaster.”

“The great hero. Saving him before it’s too late. Whose idea was it to not phone sooner? Whose idea was it to begin this little ?Adventure’ in the first place?” I asked.

“His Adam” Jeff replied, pointing at the child, less than a child, on the floor. It was true. I was asking how we could do this. What gave us the right? It didn’t matter. He requested it. Except that’s like handing a boulder to a guy who just told you he wants to drown himself. We should have stopped him for his own good. Except we didn’t, and it was too late now. We just relaxed with him. Killed time. Waited for it to happen. Why? Because we were lazy? Partly, no doubt. Because humans always feel that bad things only happen to others people, until it’s too late anyway? Until they happen to you? That was another possibly reason. Because we’d be racking in the cash soon, just for doing this? Yes, we were almost certainly doing it partly due to the fact that we just had to babysit Matt, figuratively and literally now, and we’d earn millions. That wasn’t the main reason though. I’d heard Jeff’s main reason, and he’d heard mine, and I can certainly tell you that my attitude towards age regression stories and images changed at that very moment. The way my perverted mind worked was making me want to run into the hotel room toilet and throw up.

“What good will it do anyway?”

“Fine. I’ll get the phone.”

Jeff grabbed it, dialed. I glanced at the clock. 4:08. We were running out of time.

“We’ve got the antidote right?”

I looked up. Jeff had finished the call before speaking to me. More time had passed than I thought. Another minute.

“He’ll be a newborn by the time they arrive” I said.

“The antidote? Are you listening?”

“It might not work.”

Jeff didn’t respond. I was still looking down at my...colleague, if not friend. Always so blunt. Or was it honesty? Was his impatience, his constant criticism, his immoral values, just him being honest about himself? His own nature? What he thought of everyone who wasn’t him? It might be too late to find out soon. The mice had just disappeared. That was what made this so mind numbingly dangerous, even if a special medical team was waiting just three or four minutes away at the most. Less now I saw as I glanced at the clock. Time had become so important to me now. Matt too obviously.

“Would you mind dressing him?” Jeff asked.

“I don’t know how to do diapers. You’re the one with children” I answered.

“Fine.”

I watched as Jeff dressed Matt, who, to my surprise, put up little fuss. I never understood the aesthetical appeal of babies. Never understood how people could be so sure they looked like their parents. To me they just looked round, smooth, simple. Kind of half formed. Mutants that people find “Cute.” Surely he knew this would happen. Why would he volunteer to do this? Then it came to me. That big, biblical revelation that would make me walk away from the scene the second the medics knocked on the door. After that I just wouldn’t care, though I didn’t know it right then of course. Even now, after so long, a writer rather than a scientist. Still uncertain if I should be typing this sentence. So AR stories I used to read. I still remember that epiphany with incredible vividness.

“I know why you volunteered for this. You wanted to start again. No wonder you were always so miserable. No wanted you hate everyone so much. So many personal regrets. You’ve made a mess of you’re life. Now you get to do everything right, with the life experience that comes from age. With adult intelligence. In thirty-eight years time you’ll be a happily married, wealthy, ex-child prodigy, who did everything right from the start. I bet you’ve already got bank accounts set up, ready to be accessed by you in about eighteen years. You’ll make plenty of money from this after all.”

“Got it in one” Matt, the thirty-eight year old baby said.