“Guys! Guys! Stop arguing,” begged Dirksen. The affect of his reedy voice and his scrawny, underfed appearance made the others giggle a bit.
“What’s up?” asked Mike.
“And what’s your name, anyway?” asked Jake. “I’m not calling you Mr. Dirksen, not when you look like a sixth grader.”
“Phil,” said the shrunken science teacher, as he walked over to the now-idle machine. He whirled and glared at the other boys. “Who changed the setting?”
“What setting?” asked Mike.
“The dial. It’s set to 4. Who put it there?”
“I did,” said Ryan, “so maybe it would work four times as much when it hit you. It was supposed to be revenge, for you screaming at us.”
“Oh, you total idiot. Oh, you dumbass!” cried Phil.
“What? What? What’s wrong?” asked Mike. “I mean,” he gestured helplessly at his chubby body, “besides all this.”
“That setting wasn’t a measure of power,” replied Phil, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “It was meant to slow the process down, so the banana wouldn’t go brown as fast once you rejuvenated it. Four means the process is one fourth the speed.”
Mike stared in horror at Phil. “You mean… that dial… we’re gonna grow up at one quarter of the speed?”
Phil nodded as a tear rolled down his face. “So if Ryan here set it after it shrank Jake, that means that when Jake here is 21, we’ll only be 14… maybe.”
Ryan burst out laughing. “That’s even better!” he said. “I used the machine first, so this means this time next year we’ll be about the same age! And then I’ll be older than you! Cool!”
“Not so fast, shrimp toast,” said Phil. “When Mike went over to see the damages, the beam refracted and hit you. You went from like 11 to 9… if you’re even 9 yet.”
Ryan stopped mid-chortle and clapped a tiny hand to his mouth. “What?! What?! So… I won’t be an aduly again for… um… fifteen years?”
“No, idiot,” said Mike. “What’s four times nine?”
“Um… twenty two?”
Mike just stared at him. “It’s thirty-six. Four nines is thirty-six. How is it possible that you don’t know that?”
“Uh oh,” said Phil. “Oh, shit.” He took out his phone and turned toward the small boy. “Smile for me,” he said. Ryan just stared at him. “Goddamnit, smile big!” Ryan made a big toothy grin. Phil stared at his phone, then sighed in exasperation as the facial recognition rejected him and he had to enter his passcode.
“Are any of your teeth loose?” asked Phil.
Ryan fidgeted around with his tongue for a bit. “This one is!” He opened his mouth and wiggled the tooth next to his front teeth. “And I have a hole back here,” he said, showing a missing molar.
Phil tapped into the phone. “Upper… lateral… incisor… permanent tooth… age… lower… first… molar. Welp. The ages for those teeth tell me you’re actually probably 7 or 8 years old.”
“So?” asked Jake.
“So second graders don’t know their times tables.”
“Yeah,” said Mike, “but he’s not really a second grader.”
“Ryan, what’s three times three?” asked Phil.
Ryan stuck up his hands and stuck his tongue out in concentration. “…four, five, six… seven, eight, nine! Nine!”
“That doesn’t count,” said Phil. “I think maybe he’s regressing mentally as well. Ryan, you won’t be physically 18 for about forty years.”
“Oh man,” said Jake. “Having an extra few years of puberty is bad enough, but forty years of unwanted boners, zits, cracking voice, and severe social anxiety? Yikes.” He looked down at his own barely maturing body. “It’s only six or so months until I can have sex,” he murmured to himself, “but by the time Ryan can I’ll be, like, old.”
Just then, Mike let out a wet, loud fart. Ryan wrinkled his nose but Phil and Jake howled with laughter. “Do that again!” Jake called as he stuck his hand under his bare armpit and made a squelching sound. Mike, Jake, and Phil spent the next two minutes making fart noises and laughing at the top of their lungs.
“Shut up!” yelled Ryan. “So not only are we kids, not only are we going to grow up slowly, but we’re going to be kids in our minds too?”
“I dunno,” said Phil.
“You didn’t test it?” yelled Mike.
“It was supposed to make fruit not go to waste! How am I supposed to check the mental age of a fucking banana?” retorted Phil. “You’re the idiots playing with the machine!”