The short trip back home still took too long for Tanner, who fell asleep in Derrick's arms before they entered the house.
With his toddler brother slumbering, Derrick took some time to think on the situation. He had a new, adult body, but he was spending all his time taking care of Tanner instead of enjoying the experience. Once he deposited Tanner on the sofa, where the toddler didn't even stir from his deep sleep, Derrick grabbed the Chronivac. "One of us should study what this thing can really do," he mumbled aloud.
As he perused the instructions, opening menus and sub-menus in the process, his astonishment increased at the capacity of the strange device. He lingered on the menu for Reality Adjustments.
"That would make things a whole lot simpler," he said, walking with the Chronivac to his brother's room. After a quick scan of the room, Derrick programmed the device to adjust the physical state of Tanner's room to match his new body and watched as an almost magical transformation took place.
Tanner woke from his deep sleep as a sunbeam drifted through a nearby window and warmed his face. He rubbed his eyes, blinked, as he tried to focus in the bright light. He found himself sprawled on a thin mattress. He grabbed two wooden vertical slats with his small hands to hoist himself to his feet. He found himself facing a wall of parallel wooden slats. He turned and saw three other walls joined by design to form a square space.
"Is this a cage?" He wondered aloud at about the same instant he recognized the nature of his confinement.
"DERWICK!" Tanner bellowed with all the outrage his toddler lungs could produce. His tiny hands wrapped around two of the slats with a white-knuckle grip.
He looked around the room, a totally unfamiliar place crowded with unfamiliar furniture and murals of cartoon wildlife painted on the walls. "A cwib! He put me in a cwib!"
Tanner rattled the bars of the crib in frustration that squeezed some moisture out of the corners of his eyes. "DERWICK!"
On this second outraged summons, Derrick appeared in the room, dressed in a pair of black boxer-briefs and a tight T-shirt.
"Is the little sleepyhead finally awake?"
"I'm not a sweepyhead!" Tanner piped up with a display of adult indignation that brought a bemused smirk to Derrick's face.
"Of course not," Derrick said reasonably.
"Where am I?"
"I made some changes to your room," Derrick answered. "You wouldn't believe all the things that Chronivac can do."
"My room?" Tanner felt fear gather heavily in the pit of his stomach as he stared at the completely unfamiliar room. "Get me out of this cwib!"
"I'm busy in the kitchen," Derrick said. "You'll have to stay put a little longer."
"Stay put!" Tanner sputtered. "You cannot keep me in a cage!"
"It's a crib," Derrick corrected.
"Pwease!"
Derrick looked down at the little boy in his Peter Pan pull-ups. "As soon as Katie gets here, she can get you out."
"Katie?" Tanner asked.
"You know Katie...my old babysitter. I called her up and asked if she could take care of a two-year-old."
"You didn't!" Tanner hoped that Derrick was pulling his leg. Katie had been an occasional sitter for eight-year-old Derrick, but she was also a sexy fellow student at Tanner's high school.