Sidney didn’t understand why she was suddenly so frustrated with her mother, but she was and it was the most intense feeling of frustration she had felt in a long time. She wanted to scream and kick and bite and yell at the top of her lungs!
“No!” She shouted “No potty!”
She jumped and stomped down hard on the floor and grabbed a pillow and threw it as hard as she could.
“Sidney, you’re being unreasonable.” Her mother said “Do you want to go back to diapers permanently?”
“No diaper!” Sidney shrieked. She suddenly had an idea. So her mother wanted her to go in the potty? Well she’d do the opposite of what she said! That would show her!
“Ugh!” Sidney squatted and strained
“Sidney no!”
Her mother telling her not to only made her push harder. Her diaper crinkled softly and drooped.
“No!” Sidney said, sticking her tongue out at her mother. She wet herself too, just for good measure.
“Potty stupid!” She said, crossing her arms defiantly
Her mother looked at her. Sidney got quiet for a moment as it dawned on her that in her anger she had just pooped her diaper like a baby. But the thought only made her angry again.
“Nooo! No! No! No!” She screamed, pounding on the floor and kicking. Her mother sighed and pulled a diaper out of one of her drawers.
“All right Sidney, let’s get your diaper changed.”
Sidney suddenly found a pacifier being pushed into her mouth.
“Mmmph! Mmm!” She said, her crying growing weaker. Her mother lay her back on a changing mat and broke the tapes on her diaper and pressed a cool wipe to her bare bottom.
“Easy there Sidney, everything will be all right.” Her mother said
Sidney blushed in shame, only now comprehending what had just happened.
“Um, Mommy, I’m really-”
“No, Sidney, don’t apologize.” Her mother said “It was my fault for trying to potty train you before you were ready.”
“So the potty-”
“Don’t think about the potty honey, you can just use your pants.” Her mother said, finishing taping the diaper on and patting her on the head. Sidney grinned.
“Thanks Mommy!” She said, thrilled to be back in diapers
The next day at school Mia was walking around in a daze. Her mother had insisted that she wear a pull-up to bed as though she was worried Mia was going to wet the bed. Mia couldn’t understand it, why was she being treated like she was two?
She was walking by some groups of kids when she overheard “…turned into a baby.” She stopped and looked. Sidney, Chloe, and Evan were standing in a circle talking.
“You have something to say?” Sidney asked irritably, noticing Mia staring.
“What you were just, um, talking about.” Mia said slowly “People going from being babies to adults? Like in the first floor girl’s bathroom?”
“You too?” Chloe asked
“Yeah!” Mia sighed “I thought I was going crazy.”
“We all did.”
“So how many of us are there?”
“Just us four.”
“Just us four? Really?”
“Well unless you find someone else.” Sidney shrugged
“We were just talking about what we’ve discovered. Evan thinks this is all because of that meteor that hit a couple days ago.” Chloe explained
“I’m willing to believe anything at this point.” Mia said
“What about you Chloe? You said you found something.” Evan asked
“Yeah, check this out.” Chloe said. She took a water bottle out of her bag and took about ten steps towards the bathroom. Her outfit shriveled and changed into play clothes with a pull-up on underneath, but the water bottle warped and turned into a baby bottle. Chloe walked back and the water bottle changed back to normal.
“I could do this with a lot of objects, but you get the idea.” She said. Evan cocked an eyebrow.
“You’re saying that the two realities are connected?”
Chloe nodded “Not only that, I remembered that my mother had some old parenting books in our attic. I took one and brought it here and sure enough, the text changed!”
“As in it said it was normal for teenagers to be in diapers?”
“Yeah. Apparently in the other reality, bodies develop completely before minds even start. People usually aren’t potty trained until towards the end of puberty.”
Sidney frowned “But that doesn’t make any sense! If development is that slow, then shouldn’t old people have the maturity of ten year olds?”
“Well, no. People learn a lot faster in this reality, starting once their brain is ready around 20. That seems to be the tradeoff. What would take us a year to learn, 20-somethings in this reality can do it in a month. It takes maybe two years to go from basic addition to advanced calculus.”
“So shouldn’t they all be super advanced if that’s the case?” Sidney asked
“Not necessarily.” Chloe said “Individually a 50 year old from our reality and a 50 year old from here are about the same IQ-wise. Plus, so much of their resources are probably dedicated to taking care of babies that it offsets any benefit.”
“If twenty five percent of your population is in diapers, yeah that would be a huge drain.” Evan said thoughtfully “I think I’d find it a lot more interesting if I didn’t need to wear pull-ups.”
“Sidney!”
Sidney recognized Mr. Tyler’s voice and groaned. It was never a good thing when teachers approached her.
“What?” She asked. Mr. Tyler handed her a piece of paper.
“Your test, I thought you needed to see it. Sidney I’m worried about you.” Mr. Tyler said “Keep this up and you won’t graduate.”
Sidney looked down at the test. There was a big, red F on the corner.
“But… um, when did I take this?” Sidney asked. It was her handwriting, there was no question about that, but she couldn’t remember taking it.
“Last Tuesday.” Mr. Tyler said “I need to get to class, we can talk later.”
He walked off.
“Ouch.” Chloe said
“I didn’t even take this stupid test!” Sidney said, waving it in Chloe’s face “How could I fail something I didn’t take?”
“Wait…” Chloe said “Did you ‘take’ the test during the class period you pooped your pull-up and had to go back to diapers?”
Sidney stopped and blushed “I, well… I guess…”
“So as a baby you failed your potty training, but as a teenager you failed your test.” Chloe said “We already know that some things are connected between the two realities, why not take it a step further and say everything has an equivalent?”
“That’s not much of a stretch.” Evan said
“So our potty training abilities reflect how good we are at school?” Mia concluded
Sidney sighed again. Chloe and Evan were the top of the class, Mia got good enough grades, but she barely scraped by, if that. That would actually explain why she kept having accidents in her diapers.
“So do you know why the reality keeps expanding?” She asked, changing the subject
“Not exactly.” Evan said “I think the meteor warped reality somehow when it hit. I couldn’t tell you why though, or why we’re the only ones who can tell something’s happening. It’s probably chance as much as anything.”
“But the other reality will only get bigger?” Chloe asked
“I think so.”
“How big will it get?”
Evan frowned “That’s the million dollar question. Some of the sections will probably get huge, big enough to cover an entire block or more. They don’t seem to be slowing down.”
“I’m already a baby in two thirds of my house!” Sidney said “And I need to wear diapers unlike the rest of you! You’re telling me it will only get worse?”
“Um, yeah. Probably.” Evan said
“But there have to be others!” Mia said “People like us who realize what’s going on! They can explain the situation to everyone else.”
“But not enough.” Chloe said “Most of them will probably keep quiet, the ones who make a big deal out of it will be labeled psychotic. And anyone under the age of twenty five who says something won’t be taken seriously. My Mom thought I was playing pretend when I tried to tell her that I was potty trained and didn’t need pull-ups.”
“Wait, have you never had an accident?” Sidney asked
“No.” Chloe said
“Even at night?”
“My Mom makes me wear diapers but I’ve never peed in them.”
“Same here.” Evan said
“And me.” Mia said
Sidney groaned “Come on, why is it always me?”
Chloe looked at her “I know you had the one accident but have-”
“I poop my diapers, okay? I pee and poop in my diapers and I can’t help it. Every time I try to make it to the potty but I almost never do. I just don’t get it, it’s like I suddenly panic and forget what I’m supposed to be doing and just use my pants.”
“So it’s like you’re thinking like a baby?” Evan asked. Sidney thought about it for a moment.
“I guess… I mean I just felt really secure when my Mom put me back in diapers. I knew I was supposed to feel upset but I didn’t.”
“You’re more comfortable using a diaper than a toilet?”
Sidney nodded “And, uh, not just when I’m wearing a diaper.”
“Huh?”
“It’s just… nothing.” Sidney said. She didn’t want to admit that even as a teenager, she had begun feeling like she should just go potty in her pants.
“Oh, by the way, my family’s going on a road trip to my cousins’ this weekend.” Mia said “Hopefully I’ll be able to do some research. See if the same thing’s happening elsewhere, that sort of thing.”
“Really? That could be really helpful.” Evan said
“Yeah, I’ll be back Monday, I’ll let you know what I find then.”
“Great!” Chloe said. She checked her watch “I’d better get to class, see you later.”
“Yeah, later.”
Sidney took a side route to get to class, straight through the other reality. She was barely ten feet in when she felt the urge to go. Getting to a potty didn’t even occur to her.
Sidney squatted and sighed. She’d barely begun pushing when she felt the familiar feeling of warm mush filling her pants. It was getting easier and easier to use her diapers on command. At this point anytime she got in position her body pretty much just did the rest.
Sidney stood up and patted the seat of her diaper. It was pretty full, she hadn’t even realized how badly she’d needed to go. Had her potty training really regressed that much? The thought didn’t make her afraid or upset, if anything she was happy to need diapers.
“Eww, it smells like Sidney pooped herself again!”
Sidney turned and saw two boys snickering and pointing. They were clearly in pull-ups themselves, but it wasn’t like pointing it out would embarrass them. Especially not when she herself had a stinky diaper between her legs.
“I didn’t poop! One of you probably just farted!” Sidney retorted, crossing her arms. Two fingers pulled back the back waistband of her diaper.
“Uh-oh, Sidney, you made a mess!” Mr. Tyler said from behind her. Sidney turned beet red “Let’s get you changed before you get a rash.” He said, taking her arm and leading her away. The two boys were on the floor laughing.
“You didn’t have to tell them I had an accident!” Sidney said as soon as they were out of earshot. Mr. Tyler lay her on the floor.
“I wouldn’t need to tell them you pooped yourself if you tried to get to the potty.”
“I did try to make it to the potty!” Sidney said “I couldn’t hold it!”
“Sidney, I saw you squatting.” Mr. Tyler said as he wiped her butt “You didn’t look like you were trying. You looked like you decided to use your diaper like a baby instead of the potty like a big girl.”
“Hmph.” Sidney muttered around her pacifier