As a scientist, I knew that this was possible, but my id did not want to accept it. My partner in the lab had spent the last ten years with me perfecting a device that scrambled cells; taking patterns from existing human beings and altering them with a computer, enabling the user to change the physical characteristics of individuals into whatever human form he chose. It worked by analyzing the energy state of the subject, calculating it’s cellular structure and mapping the original state onto the desired pattern. That took one of the world’s most complex number crunchers; a supercomputer built from 65, 536 individual 64bit processors ganged together in a parallel array. It had taken us years of work to amass the resources to build it and it’s associated peripherals. We precalculated most of the computations to ease the load and sold time on the computer to the research departments of various overfunded Universities and deep-pocketed MegaCorps. It paid the salaries of the beast’s keepers and took care of the utility bills. The utility bills were staggering in size, enough to break the treasuries of most third world countries. Fortunately, so were our fees. It takes a hellacious amount of energy to dismantle a human into subatomic parts and rebuild a body from elementary particles. It’s official name was “Biocellular Analyzer, Binder and Integrator”, we called it the “Mixmaster” Years of prototyping, testing and redesigning had led to where I stood now. We had finally completed our testing with lab animals and moved onto the final phase of development. A human subject was required to complete our work. Paul wrote our names on slips of paper and put them in a coffee cup. He held the cup high as I drew the name of the lucky subject. It was mine. Then the testing began. Weeks later I found myself gazing at my reflection in a mirror and shaking my head at the results. I still couldn’t believe it.
I looked in the mirror as I waited for my wife for my wife to finish dressing and saw the same toddler I saw the day before; a plump, lovable, two year old in white underpants and a T-shirt. The underpants were padded…training pants.
I’ve been trapped in the body of a baby since Friday. The old familiar world of last week has become alien and terrifying. I dreaded the thought of accompanying my wife to do her shopping, but I had no choice. She insisted that she couldn’t leave me alone to take care of myself in my present condition and she’s right. I can’t even get a glass of water from the faucet by myself.
I wondered how long I would have to remain like this before my partner could restore me to my normal body. It was humiliating to have to dress in toddler’s clothes. What was worse, I fully looked the part; I had the rounded chubby features of a tot. My stomach protruded over the top of my training pants and my spine had the characteristic curvature of early childhood. Even the proportions of my body had been changed. My head was proportionally bigger than it had been and my limbs were shorter. Nothing about my looks suggested I had ever been anything but an infant. I was sorry I volunteered to be the guinea pig. He’d had such success with animals that my confidence level was high, and neither one of us anticipated any problems.