“There was an accident,” she explained—coldly. I certainly didn’t feel like asking anything else.
“Here it is,” she said suddenly, and produced the device. She then began to examine it more carefully. She then sighed. “Just as I feared. The controls that accelerate
the aging process instantaneously were damaged.”
So, the controller could shrink me into a kid, but the part that could change me back was damaged? Figures.
“Uh, can you …”
“Fix it?” she completed my thought. “Maybe. I did invent the thing, after all—but this isn’t the laboratory, and I don’t have any of my tools, the device’s specs, the …”
“Never mind—I get the idea,” I told her. “Just … do the best you can.”
Ten minutes later, she was finishing up some jerry-rigging of the device with a pair of tweezers (the only item we could find on short notice that had small enough
prongs that she could use, in a pinch, as a tool.)
“Here goes,” she said, crossing the fingers of one hand as she aimed the device at me. We had mutually agreed I should be the first test subject. If anything went
wrong, Laurel had to remain old enough to fix the device.
I just wanted to be old enough to shave again.
She punched the button.
I closed my eyes, held my breath for a moment.
I felt …
Nothing.
I started breathing, opened one eye and looked at Laurel.
She still towered over me.
I looked at my hand. Still a three year-old’s.
Well, at least I wasn’t any younger. Immediately, I regretted that thought; in a situation like this, it was almost asking for trouble.
Laurel swore suddenly, using words a nine year-old girl really shouldn’t know. She turned the device around so that it was pointed at herself, and looked down its
barrel. “What is wrong with this thing?!” she asked angrily, as she—I swear this is true—began smacking the side of the device with her hand.
I stared for a moment. Apparently, the frustration of the situation had temporarily relieved the good doctor of her common sense.
“Uh, Doctor Stone …” I tried to warn her.
Then, upon one of her smacks, the device … beeped.
Laurel gasped, froze.
I held my breath again as …