Better safe than sorry, Jeff decided. He would test out the machine by only changing his age by a small fraction, maybe only a tenth of a year, maybe even half of that. He opened his age settings, seeing the number 4 followed by a few odd months and days. He grimaced imagining what it would be like to grow all the way back to 16 again the long way. He fought back the impulse to just change 4 to 16 and instead went to the age change menu and selected for his age to increase by 0.05 years. At least if things went wrong and he grew younger again, he figured, he would only lose a few weeks at most. The program asked him, "Execute change?"
"Please work," he said as he hovered his finger over the enter key. He closed his eyes and pressed the button.
The Chronivac whirred to life, and he felt a tingle hit him again. It was working! He started to smile as he opened his eyes to look at the Chronivac. His smiled immediately faded as he saw the red light was flashing again, and a new message window had appeared on the computer.
"Input mismatch," it read. "Data corrupted. Attempting recovery and transformation restart."
"Wait," he squeaked. "No, no, no, stop!"
The machine ignored him, as it always seemed to do now, and a new window appeared that read, "Executing transformation: age change to -0.05 years old."
"What?"
The tingle intensified and he felt himself rapidly shrinking. Desperately, he reached for the mouse, but his arm shrank away from it as he tried to grab it.
"No!" he squealed as the world grew larger around him, and his last hope of changing back to normal slipped out of his reach. "Noooooo!" he wailed again as he manically clawed at the keyboard with his baby hands to no effect. His strength failed him as his muscle control faded away. He fell to his butt and landed on his back as his few teeth receded into his gums and his hair thinned away. His vision blurred, and his tiny infant body became so small and feeble.
Though he could no longer see it, a message appeared on the screen: "New age not valid. Locating surrogate for gestation." Emily's statistics appeared on the screen now. "Surrogate located. Adjusting reality and implanting subject."
Jeff let out a final brief cry as he suddenly vanished from the chair.
***
Downstairs, Emily had just begun to worry about Jeff's bathroom trip, when she felt a sudden tingle pass through her body. The feeling centered on her abdomen. When she looked down, she was shocked to see her belly inflating suddenly as her clothes morphed to grow with it. "What the hell?" she cried in alarm, but only moments later a dizzying wave rushed past her warping reality around her. New memories appeared in her mind as she started to forget what had just happened. For a moment, she stared at her pregnant belly in shock. Then, she wondered what was so shocking about her belly. It had been like that for months now. Her mind felt confused and foggy for some reason she could not explain. She shook her head to try to clear away the fogginess.
"Maybe I just need a snack," she reasoned as her head cleared a bit. "Low blood sugar. That's what it is. I am eating for two now, after all."
She stood up with a grunt as a strong craving for something sour and salty and sweet hit her. "Hmm, pickles and peanut butter would really hit the spot right now," she said to herself. She rubbed a hand on her belly and said to it, "How about a little snack, Jeffy?"
Her baby kicked out violently where her hand had touched it. Then, she felt its whole body writhe and attempt to stretch any way it could move in her womb. "Whoa," she said. "Someone's restless."
The baby kicked again and again and again, as if it wanted to bust its way out of her body right then. "Easy, Sweetie," she said as she rubbed her belly gently. "Wow, you want out now, don't you? It's okay. Just rest. The wait's almost over. You just have a few more weeks to go." As if it had heard and understood her, the kicking abruptly stopped. Jeffy stretched one final time, as if letting out one last outburst of emotion, and then gave up fighting at last.
"That's my boy," Emily said rubbing her belly again. "You just rest and let Momma take care of everything." She turned to the kitchen, and her mouth began to water as she imagined the pickles that awaited her.
***
Meanwhile, upstairs, the red light continued to flash on the Chronivac sitting in her bedroom.