A Whole New World

Chapter 16
Brain Drain

Chapter 16

Back home at last, Brian and Rachel were relieved to be out of public view, back in their snug rompers and left to play in Amanda’s living room. Baby gates blocked the exits to the room, and nothing small enough to swallow and choke on had been left on the floor. The whole place was now baby-proofed for big infants. All they had to play with were teething rings and rattles. That was enough for the real babies, but Rachel and Brian were quickly bored.

Joy noticed the depressed look on Rachel’s face as she checked on the babies from the kitchen, where the proper adults were enjoying a cup of coffee together. She slid the baby gate aside and entered the room, crouching by her daughter. “Oh baby, why the long face? You seem so listless today. Are you gassy? Are you coming down with something?” she asked, feeling Rachel’s cheek and kissing her forehead.

“Hmm, not warm. Maybe you just need a little love from ma-ma,” she said, rolling Rachel on her back and unsnapping her romper to expose her tummy.

Rachel squirmed, uninterested in being played with, her intelligent eyes burning with indignation. But ma-ma just placed her lips on the exposed tum-tum and blew a big raspberry on it. Rachel kicked her legs and chortled in glee. It just tickled so much! And then ma-ma did it again! Soon she was rolling on the floor laughing and smiling.

“That’s better, baby just needed some loving,” Joy declared. “I know, let’s get you in your bouncer!”

Rachel was still recovering from her giggles as ma-ma slipped her romper back off, leaving her in just the thick diaper with its heart prints. Ma-ma scooped her up and carried her over to the door jamb, pushing the baby gate aside and threading her legs through what looked like a big green diaper suspended from the ceiling by elastic straps. The green seat ensconced Rachel’s loins and ma-ma released her. She was suspended in the air, her tippy toes just touching the carpet.

“C’mon baby, show ma-ma how you like to jump!” Joy urged her.

Rachel wiggled experimentally, making the elastics stretch until her the soles of her feet were flat on the ground. She enjoyed the sensation of the carpet brushing across her soft soles again, as though she were walking. She gave a slight push from her knees and found herself rising quickly upwards. It was a dizzying and unexpected sensation, like she might just fly right away! Rachel gaped slack-jawed with surprise.

“That a girl!” ma-ma praised.

She descended with sudden rapidity and her feet connected with the soft carpet, knees bending as her weak legs refused to support her. But the elastics stopped her descent and she pushed off again, back into the air. It was lovely! What silly, pure fun! Rachel giggled as she bounced up and down in the oversized baby jumper. She didn’t even mind that her bared boobies were jiggling about with each landing, giving Brian a good show. She was once again lost in her own little world.

And so their afternoon went. Brian drifted off to a mid-day nap in the giant automatic baby swing, glimmering toys dangling from the canopy above him. Both he and Rachel made poopies in their diapers again. It had become so easy to do so, their poop becoming looser, flowing out of their bums with little warning and requiring little effort. They were even becoming accustomed to being changed in front of each other and the other babies. The changing sessions, with their mommies pecking them with kisses, giving them lovely toys and rubbing down their privates with smooth cream and sweet smelling powder, were actually enjoyable. They almost made the foul-smelling diapers and icky bottoms worth it.

By the evening though they were both bored again. Sue was having her turn in the jumper, Danny in the swing, leaving Brian and Rachel to the toys. Meggy was creeping nearby, trying to reach ma-ma’s bag, left by the couch. The diaper-clad woman reached her goal and after a couple attempts succeeded in knocking the bag over with her clumsy hands. So it was that the cursed book made one more appearance.

Meggy of course hadn’t a clue what it was. She didn’t recognise the object before her had completely stolen her life, reduced her to a mindless pooping machine for her ma-ma to care for. She didn’t even know it was a book, or for that matter, what a book was. So all she did was chew at the plastic corners.

Brian and Rachel though, knew exactly what Meggy had. Brian had no more interest in the book though. He was convinced now that it could bring nothing but bad luck and he had no intention of ever attempting to use it again. With any luck they’d start to slowly progress, grow back up. Rachel, however, looked at the book with desperation in her eyes. She hadn’t been there the last time it changed their lives, only Brian had seen how hopeless it was. Rachel still thought that wretched tome might hold the key to her salvation.

Rachel began to creep towards Meggy, a look of wild, almost insane hope in her eye. Brian couldn’t believe what she was doing. It was beyond all reason to think that thing could actually help them. As much as he wanted to just ignore it, he couldn’t allow Rachel to get her hands on it and then make things even worse. So he too began to creep across the room on his bare tummy, his romper long ago stripped off for ease of diaper changes.

The painfully slow race of the two frog-legged scooting young adults proceeded before the bemused eyes of their mentally-reduced cohorts. Their diapered bums lifted and dropped and their arms batted at the floor, propelling them along. In the end they reached Meggy at the same time. Rachel seized the book away from the girl, making her pout and whine. Holding it triumphantly up Rachel tried to reason a way to use it now that she couldn’t even speak. How could she exhort it to fix her without a voice to do so?

As she pondered this Brian grasped the other side of the book, shaking his head vigorously at her.

“Mmmdaadoo!” Rachel babbled angrily, scrunching up her face and pulling at the book with her weak arms.

“Eeehaaah!” Brian screeched back, pulling his own direction. “How stupid could she be?” he thought to himself.

The book sprung open as they pulled at the front and back covers. The plastic stretched, threatening to rip the book in half any second. The book was starting to give way, and a little tear appeared at the top. As soon as it appeared, a green light began to emanate from it, pouring out like radiation in a cartoon. Both Rachel and Brian froze, wondering how much younger they could possibly get.

The world didn’t shift though, it didn’t even freeze. Instead the greenish light energy seemed to grow outward, towards Brian. With a gasp he pulled his head back, but he was too weak and clumsy to actually make a getaway. The green energy shot into his temple.

Rachel watched, petrified, as her last real friend opened his mouth with shock, his eyes wide with terror. The green energy connecting his temple to the book pulsed, growing lighter and darker as though breathing. Brian’s terrified eyes glazed over, the fear draining from his face. His jaw loosened, mouth hanging wide open, lips slack. His eye-lids drooped slightly as his faraway eyes dulled. His whole face seemed to change before her eyes, his muscles losing their tension.

The beam receded, pulling back from Brian’s temple. A thick string of drool was hanging from his chin as his gaping mouth formed into a smile. His hands released the book and he dropped back onto his bum, legs splayed wide before him. He appeared almost drunk to Rachel, his head wobbling side to side. He looked at her and stuck his tongue out just between his lips and blew, sending spittle everywhere. He chortled as his spit bubbles popped, then seized his right foot in his hands, pulled it to his face and blinked spellbound at his long wiggling toes before jamming them in his mouth.

Rachel felt awful guilt as she looked into his eyes and saw they had become like Meggy’s, empty of even a flicker of intelligence. She knew it was all her fault. She never should have been so foolish as to fight with him over the book. Now she’d destroyed his mind and she was all alone. There was no one left to commiserate with, to scheme an escape with. Now Brian was nothing more than little Bri-Bri, a dumb little toe-muncher no brighter than Meggy. He’d be happy to play with baby toys and poop his diaper for however long they remained this way. Only she would be miserable.

In a moment of weakness, of utter despair, Rachel decided she couldn’t go on this way alone. She rolled to her back and managed to sit up, though it took considerable effort. She grasped the book in her hands and pulled with all her might, trying to rip it in two. Bri-Bri gazed at her with curious incomprehension.

The book reacted just as she knew it would. It had worked as planned, though it would likely be the last plan she’d be able to reason and carry out for a long time. The green light shot out of the tear. Rachel paused as the energy sat before her, seemingly analysing her. Then it blasted into her temple.

It wasn’t a painful sensation as she’d imagined it would be. It felt like warm marshmallow pumping into her head through her temple. Warm and gooey it trickled through her head, invading every crevice, making her thoughts sticky, slowing them down. It was quickly becoming hard to think, yet she felt comforted, warm, almost happy. Speech centres tingled, words blasting through her mind, then went dark, leaving her instantly wordless, her thoughts reduced to images. All the objects in her field of vision lost their names in an instant. Without words she couldn’t describe what they did, all her memories were in words. Suddenly she couldn’t understand what anything was. It was not a pleasant feeling, total and utter confusion. But mercifully it was short-lived.

The confusion dulled as her memories scrambled and disappeared. All her recollections of college, of high school, elementary school, growing up, riding a bike, swimming, driving a car, were wiped away in an instant. She still knew she was a grown-up and that she knew all the people in this room, but she had no idea what being a grown-up meant or how she knew them.

A sensation of indescribable pleasure washed away the rest of her confusion as her brain simplified, her higher thought processes shutting down and taking away all her inhibitions, her fears, her worries. Rachel no longer minded being naked but for her diaper, she wouldn’t have minded being completely naked. She no longer had the ability to feel embarrassed, or to worry about the future.

Brain cells were slaughtered by the million but Rachel didn’t miss her reasoning abilities as the left her. Because as soon as they were gone, she didn’t know she’d ever possessed such amazing thinking abilities. In the final seconds, as Rachel’s final IQ points disappeared, she lost her sense of past and future and even her sense of identity. She wouldn’t even recognise herself in the mirror anymore. She could not plan, could not think ahead. If an object left her field of vision it ceased to exist for her.

Finally the gooey warm marshmallow tickling her brain slipped back out of her temple, the green light disappearing into the book, leaving her mind empty, a clean slate. Rachel gazed at the person facing her and wondered who he was. Warm liquid tracked down her front-side. She ignored it. The person, Rachel was no longer aware of distinctions like he and she, was sucking its toes. Rachel copied it, pulling her foot to her mouth and suckling the toesies. She didn’t really comprehend the wiggly things were a part of her, but it felt nice to suckle. It made her feel something in her tummy, like she was eating. It gave her a sense of comfort. She felt her slobber dribble down the sole of her foot and it tickled. She liked that. Warm stuff poured out of her, she felt relieved, relaxed down below. It made her warm all around the puffy thing she wore. She forgot all about the toes, only focussed on what she was thinking about right now. The warm feelings in the diaper made her happy. She was a very happy baby.

**

Joy entered the playroom that evening to check on the babies and immediately shook her head. “Geese, I can’t leave you two alone for two seconds can I?” she declared.

Brian had gotten out of his diaper again and was splayed naked across the floor with his poopy bum presented to her. Hearing her voice he craned his neck around and gaped smiling up at her. Rachel was sat in a blue Bumbo right before him and at least she was still in her diaper. She looked up at her ma-ma with wide baby eyes, chewing away at the corner of her baby book, slobbering all over the poor thing’s cover.

Joy clucked her tongue and told her, “Honey, I hope you like to read books someday as much as you like to eat them now.”

Rachel yanked the book out of her mouth, a string of drool still connecting it to her lips, which she pursed to blow bubbles at ma-ma. Joy gently removed the wet book from the baby’s hands so it could be cleaned up. Rachel let it go, already forgetting about it as she babbled, “Daadoobaa... aaheehooooh” in cheerful tones.

“Yes sweetie, I’m sure,” Rachel replied, pretending to understand the baby’s senseless blather.

Brian continued to grin up at her with that endearing toothless smile of his and Joy decided the poopy-bummed jaybird could wallow happily in his filth for another minute while she disposed of the well-chewed book.

Joy carried it out to the kitchen by two fingers, trying not to touch the slobber coating much of it. Then she tossed it in the trash bin. “Ugh, who gave Bri-Bri such a silly toy,” she wondered aloud, heading back to fit the boy with a clean diaper.

What she couldn’t see as the trash bin lid closed, was the book take on a strange glow one last time before disappearing into thin air. This world had been sufficiently warped, now it was time to change a new world, a new dimension. It would take time to build up power of course, but then it was more than just a book and it had all the time in the universe. And so a newly reformed black leather copy of a literary classic appeared once again in the dusty stacks of a prestigious library. And there it would stay, not until someone came looking for it, but until it decided to go looking for them.