“It was an experiment,” I said simply. I wasn’t sure I could explain how the field worked to a non-physicist. I wasn’t even sure I could explain what had happened to a physicist for that matter.
“What kind of experiment?”, he probed.
“I was creating a localized field in the lab,” I hedged.
He raised his eyebrows and said, “And?”
“I had an accident,” I replied.
“So I see,” he said with an air that told me he knew I was being evasive, “Would you care to expand upon that?”
“Not really,” I said honestly, “I had just finished working on one of the coils when there was an accident and the field was turned on. I was caught in the field and when I awoke I was like this. Frankly, doctor, I don’t know what happened. The field was not supposed to do anything like this. It was designed to be a temporal stasis field.”
“I see,” he said nodding wisely as if he understood completely. I knew he was as baffled as I was, only his personae as a doctor wouldn’t permit him to appear ignorant. He was bluffing.
“Would you like to try walking for me?”, he asked, “I’d like to check your locomotor coordination.”
I nodded and he told the nurse, “Would you give Professor Hawkins a hand getting out of bed? Put his feet down on the floor next to the bed so I can see how he walks.”
She lifted me out of the crib and stood me next to the lowered bars on the side of the crib. I took a tentative step forward and lurched to the side as my knees threatened to buckle under me. I grabbed the bars of the crib, holding myself upright while he looked on with a concerned expression. He backed off a few steps and said, “Professor, let go of the bars and try to walk towards me without holding on to anything.”
I released the bar I was holding and started to totter towards him. I felt like an infant learning how to walk. The thick disposable diaper between my had bunched up at the bottom and were forcing my legs apart. I had to waddle to swing my legs around the padding at my crotch. As a grew nearer to him, he backed off a step, forcing me to continue. I swayed once or twice as I uncertainly wobbled my way to the doctor. I looked up into his eyes and saw him towering over my reduced body. He looked so tall standing there. I kept getting the strongest feeling that I had done it all before. Then I realized who the doctor reminded me of, he looked like my father had when I was young! I took two more steps and then I fell backwards to land on my diaper-covered bottom. It was a painless fall, but no less humiliating for the lack of physical injury. Only my pride was wounded. I could not even walk across the room without falling on my bottom. I dropped my chin to my chest and closed my eyes in shame. I felt helpless. He had given me a chance to prove that I was an adult and I had fallen on my rump like a baby. I had flubbed my chance. I felt myself being lifted by hands from the rear and put back in the crib. The doctor made some notes on the chart and handed it back to the nurse, then said, “Professor Hawkins, we’d like to keep you here for a few days of observation. In general, you health appears to be unaffected by your transformation. You apparently have some difficulty with locomotor coordination, but that may be the result of unfamiliarity with your new body. Your incontinence disturbs me somewhat but that may be a transitory effect of the changes your body has undergone.”
