While you are still upstairs, your sister takes a look at the empty package on the table. “It looks like someone got new socks” she thinks as she turns the package around. A sheet of folded paper falls out onto the table. Curios as Susan is, she looks it over, reading the explanation. “That´s absurd, magic socks? Which can change you into whoever shoes you put on afterwards?” she thinks and laughs a bit.
Just then her little kid brother Tim moved towards the shoe cabinet by the front door. “Wait, Tim is over at my neighbors with his friend, I saw him there. And he has no keys to come in alone, and can´t be here faster than me” Susan thought. Another look at the sheet and she realizes that that wasn´t Tim, but someone else. “Most likely Tom, who is afraid of me finding out. That´s why he didn´t respond when I called.”
Just as “Tim” got Tom´s shoes from the cabinet and turned, Susan decided to greet him. “Hey there, Tim. Do you know where your brother is?” “Tim” stiffened at her addressing him. “Uhm…” he gave as a response.
With a small laugh, Susan mentions him over. “You got his shoes, so I guess he is upstairs, and is hoping to escape outside to not babysit little Ken here.” Now “Tim” looks rather guilty. But he came over to her.
As soon as he was near enough, Susan moved and hugged him tightly, sitting back with him on her lap. “Hey, let go” “Tim” mutters, but she didn´t. Instead she grabs for the basket with her little Ken inside right next to her on the table, pulling his baby-booties of without her brother noticing.
Grinning, she adjusts “Tim´s” position on her lap, and slips the booties over his feet instead. He had left Tim´s shoes in his room and only came down in his magic socks after all. As a shudder went through “Tim´s” body, Susan laughed. “It really works, right, Tom?” Tom went rigid on her lap. “How did you…?” “You left the empty package on the table, with some kind of manual for the socks inside. And as I saw “Tim” moving around, when I have seen him with my neighbors, I could guess.”
On her lap, Tom had started to shrink even smaller. He gave a yelp in panic as he noticed. “What are you…? Before his voice went away in gibberish. “I had to try the socks myself, and as it was the easiest, I took little Ken´s booties for you, Tom.”
Tom wanted to protest, but while he could think what he wanted, nothing was understandable to Susan. The now mostly naked baby boy throws a fit on her lap. So, Susan got up again, pulling the rest of Tim´s clothes off of Tom´s body. When he was naked, she laid him on the table and slipped the booties back over Ken´s feet, before she took a change of clothes she had packed for Ken and put it on Tom.
Soon Tom was wearing a diaper, covered by a green onesie, and fitting green booties. As he was still throwing a fit, she pushed a pacifier in his mouth and used it´s cord, which normally was used so the baby didn´t lose his pacifier, and bound it behind his head a bit tightly. That way he couldn´t spit it out.
Slowly Tom calmed down sucking on the pacifier, as his mind grew foggier slowly. “Don´t worry, Tom. I will be happy to have you be my second son. But as you are Ken´s twin brother then, let´s name you Ben instead, okay?” Susan said grinning.
While Ben´s eyes got wide in fear, not wanting to be his sisters second son, Susan returned Tim´s clothes to his room and took his shoes from Tom´s room to the cabinet alongside the one´s he had gotten from there before, and packed the socks back into the package. She would keep them, maybe she could use them herself later. They had grown back to normal size after she removed them from Tom´s feet.
Susan smiled at her brother, now more like her son´s twin brother. She was sure she would miss Tom, but having two sons instead of one is far better than a brother.
T
As Susan had read in the explanation, she had made her plan. It said that if you put the shoes on yourself, you change into the owner of said shoe´s with your mind completely intact. You would get some knowledge of the owner if you keep the body longer, but your mind stays the same.
But if someone else puts the shoes on your feet, said knowledge came faster, and the mind changed alongside, making the wearer of the socks into a real twin of the shoe´s owner. Normally it took between an hour and a day for the knowledge to set. For someone being forced to change, however, it took between ten minutes and an hour for the knowledge to set, with the mind a bit longer, maybe the double amount of time.
But as Ken was only a rather newborn life, it was far faster for Tom to change mentally. Tom, not knowing all this, “watched” his memories vanish from his mind, knowledge as well, until nothing of him was left. Only a second Ken remained behind. And as Susan had said, she would call him Ben instead.
Susan saw the fearful face of Ben relax more and more, and finally he looked happy, if tired. She was lucky the basket Ken was in was big enough for two babies, so she placed Ben next to him. They both looked at each other, and slowly moved a bit, finally holding each other in some kind of hug. Susan smiled down at her boys, before she headed out to her appointment with both her babies, as she now had no babysitter without her brother.
What was not mentioned in the sheet was that after someone was forced to change, over time the old person would be forgotten by everyone else as well, so after some time nobody would remember her brother Tom, not even she herself. All they would remember instead was the new twin of whoever the person was forced to change into, only keeping the old name. And as the records were still made, Susan could just change the name Tom for the twin-brother to her preferred Ben. There was no reason for her naming the boy Tom, as she didn´t know anyone with that name.