The Family

Chapter 5
Conclusion

[quote][quote][quote]The brisk air sent a slight chill through them both as Gwen dutifully unpinned their cloth diapers and slid the offending material out from underneath. As they lay exposed, Seth and Lindsay turned their heads toward one another. Reading each other’s respective states of mind presented certain unique challenges, depending on their level of physical maturity. Communication proved difficult, nigh impossible, when they inhabited the bodies of newborns. The separate cradles were their own special hurdle. As two-year-olds, they sometimes talked at night, though their hushed conversations were few and far between since Lindsay admitted to feeling hopeless three weeks ago. Seth remembered the exchange well; the words echoed in his head every night.

“We’re going to be children forever, aren’t we?” Lindsay had asked, sobbing. “We might as well get used to it. They’re never going to let us grow up.”

With Seth’s fresh diaper fastened Gwen moved to grab a new one for Lindsay, but before she could the doorbell rang. Poor Lindsay was left to squirm around in her birthday suit while her mother answered the door.

“Hello?” she said, greeted by a vaguely familiar boy sporting a backpack, a stack of magazines, and a gap-toothed smile. “Can I help you?”

“Ma’am, I’m selling magazines to buy new instruments for school. Would you be interested?”

Gwen hesitated, recognizing the ten-year-old’s unmistakable accent. The name rested on the tip of her tongue. He was younger than she remembered him definitely, but a few telltale signs - the accent, his adorable crew cut, the eyes - helped to jog her memory.

“Jeff, isn’t it?” she asked tentatively. “Jeffrey Cunningham?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the fifth-grader replied. Jeff had only dated Lindsay for three weeks, and Gwen barely recognized him without the benefit of puberty. It was a curious skill only townfolk in Midian had acquired over the years, the ability to peg fellow citizens in their regressed state. Like pinpointing old high school flames at reunions, only in reverse.

“Well, come inside and...“

Before Gwen finished her thought, another child materialized, followed by a handful of young teenagers, none of whom looked happy.

“Pardon me?” she asked as the group drew closer.

Then another familiar youth stepped out of the crowd. She knew him from pictures, and his fame as captain of the high school football team. Now he appeared no older than twelve or thirteen, a scrawny replica of the thick-necked bruiser whose image so frequently occupied the front page of their local newspaper. A fierce smirk written on his freckled but uncompromising face. Far more intimidating, however, was the gun he aimed at her chest.

“Brett Barker?” she said, letting out a brief yelp.

“Shhhhh,” the boy warned. “No need to make a scene. Now back up slowly into the house and no one gets hurt.”

Gwen complied, squelching the impulse to shout at the top of her lungs. Her heart pumped feverishly as the small army of youths followed suit, crowding one by one into her kitchen. Gone was Jeffrey’s angelic smile and in its place a dozen vengeful scowls tracked her every move. There was Peter Callahan, a lanky Irish boy who forfeited a scholarship to Yale when his parents bartered away their life savings for a few more years with their only son, Kelli Seoh, the child of a strict Korean mom who discovered her marijuana stash last summer and took swift action, and Robbie West, a slow learner doomed to repeat the sixth grade forever if his grades didn’t improve.

“What... what do you want?” she sputtered pathetically.

“What do you think we want?”

“Your husband did this to us,” Brett spat, his girlish tenor unaffected by the venom oozing from every syllable. “One day we’re seniors in high school, college freshmen, adults, and the next we’re fucking children! Look at us, bitch! Of course you know what we want!”

Vibrating like a leaf, Gwen backed herself into a corner and begged Brett to lower the gun. Nothing was worth this kind of violence. What would their parents think? Just be reasonable, she urged. But the Barker boy’s determination was undaunted.

“Where is he?”

“I... I don’t know...”

“Liar. Where is your husband? He must be...“

Brett’s threats halted. As did Gwen’s impassioned pleas. A sudden quiet pervaded the room. Everyone felt it, coursing through their bones, traveling over the circuitry of their bodies. The sensation of a million light pin pricks showering their skin in a wavelike pattern. Each identified its indisputable effects almost without thinking: the Rensen Shifter. The device responsible for cleaving them all down to governable ages was at work again. Already they sensed the incredible changes taking place. The insurgents studied their frightened victim and noticed her slightly rosier cheeks and darkening long hair. They were all regressing.

Frantic, they glanced in all directions, desperate to locate to the source of the ambush. But there was no one in sight. And how could it affect them all simultaneously? It made no sense.

“What the hell is going here?” Brett demanded. “Is this some kind of trick?”

“I don’t know,” Gwen repeated, this time telling the truth.

“We know he’s down in the lab!” Jeff yelled. “Take us!”

“Now!”

Bewildered and truly confused, Gwen jumped at the order. From her pocket she produced a single key with a leather strap.

“Take it!” she insisted, dangling it at the gun barrel. “Just leave me alone!”

Hellbent on seeing the mission through, the crew of grade-school saboteurs crammed themselves down the stairway, eager to escape whatever affected them. By now the oldest, a college sophomore named Levi Evans, had been whittled down to a lad of seventeen. Though the tingle was unmistakably the result of the device, the reaction seemed slower and less pronounced than usual. Maybe they still had time.

In the basement, they were met by a forty-year-old George Tierney, entering a code into the control panel on a hulking metallic cylinder.

“Welcome!” he announced. “I was expecting you.”

Baffled by the neighborly invitation, the ragtag rebellion stopped dead in their tracks, each contemplating what appeared to be a catastrophic miscalculation on their part.

“I heard you outside. Knew it wouldn’t be long before you came stampeding through my door,” George commented, finally turning to face the conspirators. “Kelli, Peter, nice to see you all. Oh, and you can put away that pellet gun you used to scare my wife. Steve Prather gave me a full list of what you stole from his store today. You should know better, Brett.”

A hush swooped over them, stealing their thunder with it. Mr. Tierney had always been - and would always remain - one step ahead. They could feel the last vestiges of their maturity siphoning out of their bodies as he spoke. Only one question crept to mind.

“How...?”

“Well, I wasn’t anticipating such an early trial of my new invention, but you forced my hand. You can be proud of that at least. What you’re experiencing right now, boy and girls, are the effects of Leviathan,” he haughtily declared, while maintaining a safe distance from the rumbling tower. “I wouldn’t risk exposing my little secret quite so brazenly, but seeing as you’re all about to become newborns in a matter of minutes, I suppose an explanation is in order.”

Looking still younger himself, George unsheathed the Rensen device and cradled it. “As you all know, this wonderful little machine has enabled me to control this town. To keep our community in check. Some might call it a utopia. Hyperbole perhaps, but there’s no denying the power of this machine to subdue threats and strike a genuine balance in our society. No need for overworked police departments, terrorist watch lists, or even prisons. Just this miracle... in the proper hands.”

The steadily youthening rebels moaned and whimpered at the object of all their fears and frustrations. That damn contraption.

“And so I decided the global problems that plague our planet today called for a more dramatic display of the device’s power. The world will know about us sooner or later, and when they do, we’ll be ready.”

The Leviathan, which resembled a massive battery, emitted a buzzing noise, growing louder by the second. Consequently, the mutinous mob found their perspective sinking even faster, causing the more unfortunate members of the group to lose their balance. Brett glanced back, stunned to see a third of his posse ready for kindergarten.

“How’s your plan working out, Brett? You were lucky I left you a middle-schooler earlier. Now you’ll be crapping in your diapers again and begging Mommy for your bottle. You should have left well enough alone, boy.”

Brett’s fists tightened.

“Hear that?” George teased, putting his hand to his ear. “You’re witnessing the birth of the world’s greatest peacekeeper. Right now, it’s bathing this entire house in penetrating pulses of regressing energy, winding the clock back for every biological system within its radius. At full power, we’re talking a hundred square blocks - an entire city. Impressive, eh?”

“But what about you?” Jeffrey snarled, holding his dropping Dockers up with both hands. “Won’t you regress too?”

“Of course, but I have this,” George reminded them, petting his precious device. “I’ll be fine. You, on the other hand, will be transported back to the blissful ignorance of infancy. One day old to be precise.”

George’s laugh filled the room like the forces he’d unleashed. Brett’s crew looked around at one another, some wide-eyed and scared, others grimacing, while the remainder boiled with anger. Levi, now fourteen going on thirteen, motioned toward Brett’s bb gun. He got the message without a word spoken. They just needed one distraction, long enough to divert George’s attention and capture the device. Children though they were, one advantage remained: the many against the one.

The second George flinched, Brett pulled the gun, aimed, and fired - hitting George in the arm. A second shot grazed his neck.

“Why you little...“ the would-be dictator growled, blasting Peter in the gut. The beam, combined with the power of the Leviathan already saturating the room, meant the gangly youth’s transformation was speedy. In five seconds, the boy dropped several inches in height and was well on his way to babyhood.

“Nooo....!”

As Levi made a mad dash toward Mr. Tierney, the casualties mounted. Brett, already downgraded to six, absorbed a direct hit and tumbled to the floor, his body retracting into his clothes. Two blond fifth-graders managed to get within a foot of George before succumbing to the beam. Toddlers and infants, blanketed in oversized jackets and jeans, would soon litter the floor.

Lunging headlong like a major leaguer diving for home base, Levi tackled George, sending the device squealing across the cold concrete.

“Gotcha!” the twelve-year-old grunted.

“Get off of me!” Mr. Tierney hollered, grasping for something to pull himself up. “You lost, do you hear me?!”

In his haste, George grabbed a column supporting the Leviathan and placed his hand against the side of the colossal machine. The hot metal scalded him, sending a terrific pain down his right arm, and along with it, a concentrated discharge of energy.

Crying out in pain, Mr. Tierney’s body rapidly began to contract, faster than any transformation any of the onlookers had ever known. Skin painted with an otherworldly greenish glow, George regressed at a phenomenal rate, flashing through his twenties in a blink, then his teens. His reverse adolescence and puberty struck so fast any normal observer would guess he’d merely shrunk. But it was clear the Leviathan’s power erased years with such speed and precision that entire lifetimes posed no obstacle at all. In seconds, George Tierney reduced to a balling infant, only twenty-four hours old.

“Holy shit!” Levi shouted, scurrying away from the Leviathan like a frightened monkey.

But no one replied. The rest of the team lay strewn across the room, on their stomachs and backs, gaping at the scene like the babies they were. Brett, however, mind still present in the moment, grew a toothless grin.

“Guys, it’s over!” Levi said, shutting off the Leviathan and collecting the Rensen device. Dialing in his proper age, Levi sighed. “God, it’s going to feel good being an adult again.”

A chorus of giggles arose from the happy infants.

“Time to grow the hell up.”

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The pine-scented spring air whipped past their heads and sent their hair flapping backward as they drove past the city limits. The convertible rumbled beneath them. What did it look like outside Midian? She never really knew. After a lifetime spent walled off from the real world, a world where creatures lived out their natural days without interference, everything seemed foreign but sublime to the young woman in the passenger seat.

“What do you think?” Seth asked, easing the gas pedal into the floor.

“What do I think of what?” Lindsay answered with yet another facetious question.

“Well, we just passed the sign, you know,” he commented, smiling. “This is the end.”

“Midian?”

Seth nodded. God, she looked beautiful. During their months together as children, he had savored the fleeting moments he’d witnessed of her full glory. Releasing her free spirit, watching her roam free, untethered to her domineering parents, was a sight to behold. Not to mention sexy as hell. And as payment for his mental anguish, Seth felt no qualms about winding himself back to twenty-three either. Why not? Surely he deserved something for the trouble.

“Feels the same,” Lindsay remarked, leaning her head past the window.

“Liar,” Seth joked.

“All right, it feels fucking awesome. Happy now?” she joked, beaming like a wild animal just set loose from its cage.

“Thought so.”

“Do you really think the town will be ok?” she asked, waving her hand up and down in the rushing air. “I mean, with the new system.”

Seth’s demeanor took a dour turn. “Well, you know where I stand,” he said, “I still think they should have destroyed it.”

“But think of all the good it could do. Helping people I mean.”

Anxious, Seth vacillated. “I suppose. That’s what they say about every new invention. Before it becomes a weapon.”

“It doesn’t have to be a weapon,” Lindsay replied, placing her hand on Seth’s thigh, a move that immediately defused any oncoming debate. A kiss always sealed the deal. He had to concede, riding next to a hot twentysomething, with the top down, sun shining, in love, the device admitted of certain benefits.

“Whatever you say, Linds.”

“Good,” she said, leaning back, stretching her arms behind her head. “Now, where do we go?”[/quote][/quote][/quote]

 

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