Shelly was exhausted and spent most of the day sleeping. When evening rolled around, she was surprised to find a strange assortment of food scraps in front of her. It appeared to be mostly half eaten junk food, although she found a few packets of unopened snack bags. Although she found it a little disgusting, she was also very hungry and began to nibble at the food, pondering her next move.
Trixie bounded into the hole cheerfully, with a small bundle of food in her arms.
"Oh, you are awake?" said Trixie. "I was wondering when you were going to get up. I didn't want to wake you though - you looked pretty tired. Is the food okay? It was the best I could find around here. I would kill for some cheese. Maybe we should try living somewhere else, maybe somewhere with better food."
Shelly choked a little on her food. She needed to stay here to work, to reverse her strange transformation. And she needed Trixie to stay, too. She might need her for the experiments. "No, I think we are safer here. No predators, and a nice sturdy well protected home. And the food isn't that bad. Here, have some," said Shelly, offering her a snack.
Trixie quickly devoured it, nibbling around the large scrap of food. She smiled, indicating that it was a truly tasty meal. And decided not only to stay, but to follow more of Shelly's advice. She seemed like a pretty smart mouse.
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Shelly had hoped that it would be easy to reverse her transformation. But after Trixie helped her get up to the computer, she realized it was going to be much harder than she had originally thought. A second trip through the transporter would just create a different mixture of mouse and human molecules. If she wanted to be normal, Shelly needed to teach the computer how to isolate and separate the molecules of a human and a mouse. And that would require a lot of time and programming. After almost a full week, she was still working on the solution.
She was afraid that Trixie was going to be a problem. But Trixie never really questioned what Shelly was doing, or why she was messing with the computer. Shelly told Trixie that she might be able to reverse what the 'evil scientist' had done to them, and Trixie just accepted it. It seemed like Trixie just inherently trusted her. She didn't know if all mice were like that, or if Shelly had just struck a chord with Trixie. Trixie proved to be an invaluable assistant, and Shelly couldn't have done anything without her. Trixie couldn't read, but she worked very hard to help Shelly reach tall tables or retrieve things from around the lab. Trixie even ventured outside their lab into other labs around the building. Trixie was very stealthy, and taught Shelly how to sneak around unseen by other humans. They made a great team, and Shelly was making progress.
But the real problem was time. Shelly did have teaching responsibilities. She was able to send a message by email feigning illness. But if she didn't return to work soon she would be fired. Then she would lose her lab, her machine, her research .... and she would be stuck like this forever. Shelly worked long hours, but she was forced to work mostly at night. Other than the cleaning staff, hardly anyone ventured into her lab. But she still felt nervous about working during the day. It would be hard to explain why two tiny anthropomorphic mice were working on her teleportation research. It could probably be explained by revealing her identity, but Shelly still didn't quite trust the others at the Institute. She might end up as someone else's research project. So Shelly and Trixie toiled in the lab at night and slept during the day.
It was a hard, strange new life, but Shelly was getting used to it. She was actually making progress in her research, and was nearing a breakthrough. Likely, given enough time, she would have been successful. If not for her unexpected visitor.