Just as Jeff opened his mouth to respond, the computer on his desk, still on and connected to the device, flickered, a sudden burst of static crackling from the speakers. His heart skipped a beat as the screen distorted for a split second, then a warning flashed across it: "System Error: Glitch Detected. Resetting Parameters."
Before either Jeff or his mom could react, the room around them seemed to warp, like the world was being stretched and reshaped all at once. The walls of the kitchen stretched, grew taller, then shrank. The table and chairs began to shrink and grow, warping in size and shape. The clock on the wall sped up, its hands moving wildly.
In an instant, Jeff felt the familiar tingling sensation of transformation flood through him again, but this time it was far more intense. The crinkling of his diaper sounded louder, sharper, and his body began to shift again. He gasped as his toddler body rapidly grew older. His arms and legs lengthened, his features sharpened, and before he could fully process what was happening, his body had settled into the frame of a 12-year-old. His clothes, still a tiny bit too small from his earlier regression, now looked slightly better, though still not quite fitting right.
"Jeff?" His mother's voice came through, shaking. She was looking down at him, but something was wrong. Her features were changing as well. Her eyes widened as her frame seemed to shrink, and before Jeff could even blink, she had become a small child—no older than 10 years old. Her hair, once shoulder-length, now rested at her shoulders in soft curls.
"What's happening?" Jeff whispered, eyes wide in horror.
His mother looked at him, her small hands pressed to her cheeks in shock. "I—I don't know, honey. This... this isn't right."
The room continued to twist and change around them. The walls now had a faint pastel color, the kitchen was gone, and in its place stood a new set of rooms—new, unfamiliar, and unsettlingly modern. Everything was now drastically smaller. The furniture was child-sized, as though everything had regressed to a different time, a different version of the house they knew. Even the toys scattered across the floor looked like they belonged to an entirely different era.
"No! This can't be happening!" Jeff screamed, desperately grabbing for his device, but the screen blinked, showing only more cryptic error messages. "Please, please stop!"
His mom’s voice trembled, her once confident, grown-up tone now a child's panic. "This... this was supposed to be temporary, right? We were supposed to go back to normal!"
The screen flashed a final, ominous message: Reset Failed. System Corruption. Device Malfunctioning.
A loud, grinding noise filled the air, and a strange hum echoed as the device seemingly powered down, its lights dimming. The once-controlled transformation had turned into chaos.
Jeff looked at his mom, both of them now standing in a world that felt wrong. "I... I don't know how to fix this."
His mother, now more childlike than ever, looked at the device, her little hands shaking. "We need to figure this out, honey. But... we have to fix it before everything gets worse."