Pre- (Ivy League) School

Chapter 11
Up To Speed

Chapter Description: The Andersons, and others, are brought up to speed on what happened at the high school

Chapter 11

They decided to leave Emily to be babysat by Mason, for several reasons. They thought this would be another good trial by fire for Mason, and honing his big brother skills. They also knew that Emily had recently been changed and fed, so there would likely be less overhead for their son to deal with. Most importantly, they didn’t want to bring an innocent child back in front of the firing line of media that already exposed her new reduced status to the whole world just that morning.

Robert and Sarah made sure that Mason was alright with being left alone with his sister, and headed off to the car to return to the prying eyes of the outside world. They got in their car and headed off, the media taking more pictures, but to no avail, as they already had plenty of pictures of them, it was their baby that they were interested in.

As the left the media mob and began their journey to the police station they discussed what this whole thing could be about.

“They didn’t tell me much on the phone.” Sarah stated. “Maybe they are getting ready to talk about the events of what actually happened” she thought out loud.

Robert responded “I can’t imagine it would be difficult to ascertain what happened, that school had cameras in every hallway and it doesn’t seem like any suspect could have made it very far, based on the state of everyone in the room. The science on the other hand seems like a completely different scenario.”

They continued to speculate on what this could be about for the duration of their journey to the police station, an unfamiliar building to both parents. 

As they entered they were brought into a presentation room with other people of various ages. They sat for some time as the room continued to fill, some people even with babies in tow. Not everyone was as lucky to have a babysitter handy on such short notice they realized.

As all the chairs were filled, the lead investigator entered.

He began, “Hello, I’m sure these last few hours have been a whirlwind for you.” Sarah thought this was maybe the biggest understatement she had ever heard.

“We want to elucidate you on the circumstances of what occurred at your children’s school, or your family member’s place of work.” He went to the next slide, which showed a diagram of what Sarah recognized as the entrance to the school.

“We will tell you where each child was found, who we believe is the perpetuator, and what happened in the classroom itself. We have video evidence of everything that occurred, outside of the classroom itself.” This was good and bad news for Sarah, since Emily was in the classroom. There wouldn’t be video of her daughter being reduced to a baby publicly for the world to see, but it seems like they may never bee 100% sure what exactly happened in her health class.

They went to the next slide, showing a few dots of varying colors around the entrance, where the secretary sat and a few dots toward the back of the entrance area.

“This area is where Nancy Taylor, Jerry Donahue, and Paul Wright were found. We do have the video of this occurring, which we will now show. If you do not wish to see this avert your eyes now.” Sarah looked at Robert and they both decided that they needed to see this, as they refused to remain ignorant of what befell their daughter.

They saw what looked like a teenage boy fire a large ray gun looking device at a wrong side of 60 woman, who seemed to be reprimanding him in some way. A large bolt of lightning fired out of the oddly shaped nozzle of the gun, rounded off, like the nipple of a baby bottle. The light briefly engulfed the entire screen and the woman no longer emoted. You could see her shrink even at the distance of this old black and white camera. As she began her downward journey, the boy turned and fired at someone off camera.

“We hope that gives you a good idea of what was at play here.” The room sat almost silent, they had been told what had happened casually but to see a woman old enough to be a grandmother regressed to a completely dependent child in such a manner astounded them. There was some quiet crying in the room, but Sarah was unsure if that was one of the babies or one of the guardians.

They went to the next slide which showed the entirety of the location of the victims, with numbered dots, in order of their attack. They noticed that inside of the classroom, they all bore the same number except for 1 victim.

“These are all the locations of the victims, as the attacker advanced down the hall. He eventually ended up in the health room, during the class of Ms. Heather Bailey. You’ll notice that all these victims outside of 1 have a similar number. We gleaned this from the security footage that we will now show you.”

The slide switched to another video, this time of a hallway. They could see the boy entering the classroom. On the ground outside the hallway was a young infant in a pile of clothes clearly crying, apparently having been a student on the way to the bathroom not more than a minute prior to this video.

Around 30 seconds after he entered the room, there was a flash of light that could be seen to come out of the door window. Sarah felt the pit drop in here stomach, could that have been the blast that doomed Emily? The video fast forwarded about a minute, and a gigantic amount of light came spilling out of the window, and the crying baby in the hallway visibly reacted to the light, indicating that there was a large amount of sound as well.

The room was completely shocked again, but this time they were more confused.

“The next people to enter the room were our officers, several minutes later. Let me get into the placement of the people within the room so we can explain the logic behind what we setup as the most likely series of events.” This next slide was a much more blown up version of the dots of the room.

“We identified Heather Bailey, the teacher, as being the infant who was found on the desk. As all the babies in this room were too young to crawl, let alone climb we could only reason that she was the victim of the first blast, and was placed on the table by the attacker, prior to the second light.” Sarah could only imagine how humiliating it was for the supposed authority of the classroom to be reduced to a crying baby, and placed on her own desk. Although, it wasn't like little Heather had the capacity to be embarrassed for herself at that point.

“The next event that we believe happened was a targeted firing of the ray gun which was then deflected back into the gun itself, which caused the large malfunction and the ensuing regression of every remaining person in the room” Everyone listened with bated breath.

“We settled on this conclusion, after discovering a pink plastic hand mirror by the location of one of the babies, in which the glass was warped and blackened.” He turned over a paper.

“This student was identified as Emily Anderson.” Sarah felt sick again, but also proud. Her daughter was going to be the focus now more than ever, but she took down the attacker, even giving herself up in the ultimate sacrifice. She was lost in her own head for a bit but could see all the heads craned backwards to look at her and her husband.

“Finally” the investigator added. “The identity of the perpetuator we believe is David Ward.” One of the audience members who was holding a baby over her shoulder cried out. Sarah looked and saw that it was Mrs. Ward. The diapered infant laying on her must have been David she thought. Everyone now looked at the family with extreme malice.  Sarah quickly felt angry, but then realized that all her momentary hatred was directed at an innocent mother and a clueless baby. Some others in the room weren’t quite as even keeled as Sarah had been, and the Ward family was escorted out of the room for their own safety.

“We want it to be known, that we will not be pursuing charges against David at this time. Although he was an adult at the time the crimes were initiated, he now clearly no longer possesses the faculties to be held responsible for his actions. With all of our scientific understanding so far being that the mind of these babies have been entirely, or almost entirely erased to that of a normal infant.” The crowd continued to stir but seemed to understand the situation, as they had all been dealing with similar babies to David since this morning.

“This is the press conference we will be sharing with the media in an hour’s time. Please do what you need to do in this time, as we expect the media coverage will become even harder to control following this.” 

With that their briefing concluded, now with a new sense of what actually happened to their daughter. They talked with Amy for a bit about Kaitlynn, but didn’t stay too long as they didn’t want all the other parents to hone in on them.

On their way back they talked through the new discoveries. Sarah thought about the infant face of David Ward, who had apparently invented a world changing device, seemingly just for the purpose of embarrassing and undermining their daughter. She mused that in that pursuit he had perhaps succeeded, but had no mental capacity to appreciate his success, having been hoisted by his own petard. She thought about the fact that he had similarly been reduced to an infant, embarrassed in exactly the same way as Emily, and even more derailed. She pictured him laying in his mother’s lap again, in his clearly hastily purchased onesie, wailing, with the distinct leg flaps of his diaper poking out from his tiny legs. All because he was too prideful. Emily had certainly cured him of his pride, and Sarah couldn’t find it in herself to be hateful towards a poor, innocent, clueless, baby.