"Hold on, that's Carolyn! Why's she been following us?"
Carolyn hopped out of her car and strolled around to face her now teenaged
husband, who showed not a trace of the old Steve except for his rural
orneriness and rather baggy old-fashined overalls. She gasped when she
saw him, then frowned.
"Steven Zachariah Smith! I should have known you wouldn't quit when the
quitting was good!" she said, shaking her head. Steve blushed.
"Aw, shucks, Carolyn, I was just pullin' over anyways, and--"
"And now I'm a-married to a teenager--a young one at that! You darn fool! I
figured you might do something like this...that's why I followed you. You ain't
got much further to go, do ya, hon?" she asked Cindy.
"Five minutes at most," said Cindy "and we should have the antidote at the lab
there, so we can make you and Steve whatever age you want."
"Great! Scoot over, shorty!" Cindy got into the back seat with me as Steven
got into the passenger side. His boots were flopping on his legs and he was
already starting to turn 15. If he had been wearing pants and a belt they
would have started falling off by now.
Carolyn kept nagging him as we drove the last bit towards the lab, sounding
more and more like an upset older sister than an old wife yelling at her old
husband.
“My god, just look at me!” said Stevc, looking at his own hands. “I…I’m a
young’un again…just a kid.” At this point his rustic, way oversized clothing
over his 13-year-old body made him look like Huck Finn dressing in his dad's
clothes.
“See, you melonhead!” said Carolyn. “You always do what your heart tells
you, though; that’s why I love ya.” Steve blushed visibly. “Don’t worry, if worse
comes t’ worse I’ll take care of you.”
“So who’ll take care of you?” laughed Steve.
We finally pulled into the parking lot of the research center and Steve and
Carolyn had both lost some more years...he was now 11 and she was 18
herself, looking quite pretty even though her dress was several sizes too large
for her now.
"Let's get to the lab!" said Cindy and we hopped out of the car, Cindy and I
running like excited kids towards Disneyland. Only then I noticed that there
were men wearing black suits, sunglasses and gloves waiting for us at the
door...
"Subjects confirmed!" one of them said into a walkie-talkie. They grabbed us
and put handcuffs on us. Over by the car some more men in black grabbed
Carolyn and Steve, who tried to fight back by kicking and punching, to no
avail. Then everything went black as a hood went over my head...
When it was removed I found myself tied to a little kid's chair with Steve and
Carolyn tied to some reguar-sized chairs in the cell with me. Actually, it
looked more like an observation chamber, the kind where the cops watch the
suspect talking to the detective through the one-way mirror. Cindy was tied
up as well outside the chamber, in a room full of electronic controls,
monitoring devices, and test equipment. One of the burly guards was in our
room, and another in the lab room guarding Cindy.
A middle-aged looking woman with hawkish features wearing a lab coat over
her white business suit strolled into the room where Cindy was.
"So, Cindy...we meet again!" she said, sneering. "My, you were quite the cutie
back then, weren't you? Have you reconsidered my offer?"
"You!" spat Cindy. "So it *was* you who burnt down the lab and stole my
equipment! Dr. Ellen Hardy!"
"Yes, you didn't want to share your research with my company despite our
generous grant offer," said Dr. Hardy. "Well, it seems that you and a few of
your friends got quite overexposed to the chemical you were developing in
that lab of yours. I don't recognize the other two older ones, but that little one"
- she must have meant me - "is the one that lived close to your lab, correct?"
Cindy said nothing.
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter," said Dr. Hardy. "As you can see, we've
already taken over your urban facility as well."
"So why are we still talking?" asked Cindy. She looked like she was stalling
for time...but why?
Of course! I thought.
"Why, it's simple, really..." murmered Hardy. "We've been having a problem
with the research files. Your assistant here burned all the hard copies of the
data and we can't break the encryption. We would have tried to get it out of
him, but he exposed himself and the majority of my force to a spray of the
youth compound. We can't even sort out which baby or toddler he is, let alone
interrogate him now."
"And I'll bet your staff is lousy at putting on diapers," chuckled Cindy.
Dr. Hardy laughed with her for a second, but her eyes were still icy. I noticed
that a few of the wrinkles around her eyes and face seemed to be
disappearing. Steve and Carolyn were probably a year or two younger by
now in my room too; I could see 16-year-old Carolyn figeting against the
loosening ropes.
“But unless we have a distraction she’ll never get away from the guard!” I
thought to myself. I had to do something; but what?