She picked up the phone—the strange app still open—and tapped “Generate Sentence.”
"Sophia is a 32-year-old daycare worker at Little Daisies."
She bit her lip, thinking. “32” stared back at her mockingly. With a defiant grin, she replaced it with “22” and hit enter.
The world lurched.
Colors shifted. The floor felt farther away. Her oversized clogs slipped off her now-tiny feet with a clomp. A pacifier lay near her knees. Her hands—chubby and too small—struggled to hold the phone as her oversized uniform turned into a pastel romper.
“Wha– no no no!” she squeaked in a tiny voice, struggling to balance.
She was two years old.
In panic, she tried tapping the screen again, but her clumsy fingers hit random buttons. Her baby hands swiped the wrong way, auto-filled words mashed into sentences. She watched helplessly as the screen blinked and changed.
"Jane is a 2-year-old girl who has always been this way."
"The daycare is for girls only."
"Sophia is just one of the girls attending today."
Reality folded. Jane blinked as something clicked in her head. She looked up from her dollhouse with a strange expression. The memories of her life before still lingered—faint and ghostly—but now cushioned by a toddler’s certainty that she had always been little. She frowned in frustration, something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t name it.
Then came the most crushing change of all.
Another accidental confirmation appeared as Sophia mashed the phone again:
"Sophia’s mommy comes early."
Sophia's heart raced when she heard the sound of a familiar voice in the daycare parking lot. Her own mother’s voice. The words were indistinguishable, but she knew who it was. There was no mistaking it. Her mother was here.
Sophia’s baby-sized legs moved instinctively. She had to hide the phone. She wasn’t about to let anyone find it, especially her mom.
With shaky hands, she hurried over to the nearest plant pot, hiding the phone as best as she could in the dirt. The screen was still lit, casting a faint glow in the dimly lit daycare. She glanced up in a panic, but her mother’s voice grew closer. She heard her footsteps—mom was coming.
Shortly after, the door swung open and her mother entered, a bit confused to see her daughter outside the playroom. "Sophia? What are you doing in here? You should be playing with the others"
Sophia felt the familiar hands scoop her up and place her into the stroller, feeling her body stiffen at the thought of what had just happened. This wasn’t right. She had no control over any of this anymore.
“Let’s get you home. Your father’s been working late again”
Sophia stared at the daycare, the sounds of the girls playing in the background, the muffled hum of the world outside. I have to get back to the daycare, she thought, but for now, she was trapped.
As her mother pushed the stroller, Sophia could only wait for the next day, hoping that the phone would still be waiting for her when she returned.