Lori’s Amazing AR Adventure

Chapter 2
Conclusion

Where the story left off...

Three year old Miriam, still clinging onto a few of her woman-sized garments, toddled behind the girls and looked on helplessly while they started rummaged through her closet and dresser drawers. She felt that her private life was being invaded by the two sisters as they methodically perused her personal belongings and clothing, but in her present size there was nothing she could do to stop them.

“No offense, but you do have kind of boring dresses,” remarked Stacey as she checked out Miriam’s wardrobe hanging in the closet. “When I grow you back up, maybe you’ll want to buy some cooler clothes.”

“Ooh, Miss Anderson - this looks a bit daring for a teacher,” giggled Connie, holding up a black satin bra. “Of course, it’s a bit big for you now.”

“She won’t be wearing any of these for a while,” Stacey smiled as she looked through a collection of dresses, which disappointingly looked much like the dull, businesslike clothes her mother wore to work every day.

The two girls continued looking through Miriam’s things for several minutes before getting tired and deciding they needed to make haste to their original destination - the mall. Before they left, Stacey stopped to give the young Miss Anderson a final warning.

“Remember, you be a good little girl,” she admonished, stooping down to Miriam’s height and waving her finger in Miriam’s face. “No phone calls! This is a secret between me and you and Connie. Nobody in the world would believe that you’re really a fourth grade teacher - they’ll just think you’re a little girl telling crazy stories. And if misbehave, I won’t change you back on Thursday - and that means you’re going to stay like that.”

“I’ll be good, I pwomith,” said Miriam, shuddering to think what it would be like to remain as a three year old permanently.

After the girls had departed, Miriam rapidly discovered how difficult it was for a child of her height to use furniture and bathroom fixtures designed to adult scale. She debated calling 911, but realized that nobody would believe her story. Simple actions that were taken for granted by a fully grown woman, such as reaching items on the kitchen table or opening a door, required prodigious feats of jumping and stretching by a toddler.

Miriam had no clothes that would even come remotely close to fitting. After puttering around naked for a while, she finally made a sack dress out of an old pillowcase to preserve a small bit of her modesty.

=====

The doorbell rang. By force of habit, Lori went to peer through her security peephole to see who was there, but suddenly realized she was no longer tall enough to use it. She sighed and opened the door.

“Lisa, thank goodness you made it!” Lori exclaimed at the sight of her friend. Lisa was of about average height and weight for a woman, and normally several inches shorter than Lori, so it was a bit disorienting for Lori to see how huge Lisa seemed now.

“Lori?” asked Lisa, looking at down at the girl with a puzzled look.

“Don’t you know who I am?” asked Lori. “Like I tried to tell you on the phone, I’m just a bit smaller than I was earlier today.”

“Lori - Oh my god, it is you!” Lisa exclaimed in amazement. She bent down to be at eye level with her youthened coworker. “You were serious! No wonder your voice sounded so weird. Holy cow - just look at you!”

“It is kind of strange to be so little,” managed Lori, becoming a bit self-conscious from Lisa’s attention. “I mean, I’m used to being tall.”

“What the heck happened to...um...make you like that?” asked Lisa, a bit tongue-tied with the concept that of one of her best friends now looked like she belonged back in grammar school. “I mean, how did you...get so young?”

“Well, it was pretty much like I told you. That metal box I found at lunch - the remote control “thing” I showed you and Nancy at work this afternoon - well, I was curious, and tried pushing one of the buttons.”

“And...it did this to you?” said Lisa, gesturing at Lori’s “new” body.

“I guess whatever power is in that device was a bit stronger than I expected,” explained Lori sheepishly. “I wouldn’t have minded losing a few years, but it wasn’t exactly like I planned on changing myself into a kid like this.”

“Where’s that box at now?” asked Lisa.

“My neighbor Sharon’s daughters took it with them when they left,” said Lori. She turned the other way for a moment and called out toward her bedroom. “Hey, Sharon, my friend Lisa is here. Come on out.”

“Just a minute, Lori - let me finish getting dressed,” called back a childish voice.

A moment later, a little blond girl, even younger than Lori, stepped into the living room.

“Hi, I’m Lori’s neighbor Sharon,” she introduced herself, looking up at Lisa. Sharon had managed to dress herself in some of Stacey’s old clothing, which she had fortunately washed and packed away several months ago with the intention of giving it to charity.

“Uh...hello, Sharon,” responded Lisa uneasily. “You mean...you were older too? I mean, like Lori?”

“I’m 35 years old,” said Sharon. Seeing Lisa’s quizzical squint, she realized how outlandish her words must seem coming out of what looked like a 5 year old’s mouth. “I guess that I should say I was 35 years old.”

“Her daughters grabbed that thing right out of my hands while I was trying to figure out if it had a reverse setting,” explained Lori. “The next thing we know, they zapped poor Sharon with it. They must have given her a really strong dose.”

“Those girls - they’re usually good kids, but when they get out of line, they get really disrespectful,” said Sharon. “When I get my hands on them...I mean, when I get changed back to adult size...”

“Sharon, how old are your daughters?” asked Lisa. The question seemed like a ludicrous thing to be asking a five year old child.

“Connie just turned 11, and Stacey is 9,” replied Sharon. “Hey - I just realized, my kids are both older than I am now.”

“They’re both bigger than me now, too. That seems weird - I used to babysit them,” reflected Lori. “Sharon, we need to find them to get the device back. Where do you suppose they might have gone?”

“That’s a good question - but if I know my daughters, they really wanted to go to the mall after dinner.”

Lori vividly imagined the chaos that the two preteen girls could cause with the age-altering control box in a crowded shopping mall.

“Lisa, can you drive us to the mall?” asked Lori.

“Let’s go,” said Lisa, already heading out the door.

On their way to the mall, Lori and Sharon debated on the best strategy to find the girls, assuming they had in fact gone shopping. Lisa remained quiet and oblivious to their conversation as she drove. Her thoughts were running through her brain at triple speed as she gradually accepted the incredible reality that the small control box Lori had found at lunch was really some kind of ray gun that could reduce a person’s age. How else could anyone explain what had happened to Lori? And, assuming that they recovered this fantastic device...well, once Lori and her neighbor had been restored to their normal ages, what logical reason would there be not to shave a few years off Lisa’s own body? She had just celebrated her 37th birthday two months ago. While she was very attractive for her age, Lisa imagined how nice it would be, for example, to be Lori’s ?real’ age - 32 years old - once again. Or maybe even become a few years younger than Lori.

=====

Discounting the short amount of time they spent testing the age changing device and pulling a few harmless pranks on bystanders, it took Connie and Stacey a total of less than ten minutes to walk to the bus stop near their apartment. Going shopping at the mall was always fun, and with the age-changing control in their possession, the evening promised to be much more enjoyable than a routine shopping trip.

A bus arrived only a few minutes after they reached the otherwise deserted bus stop, and the mall was only a ten minute ride away. The terminal stop happened to be directly in front of one of the large anchor department stores. Cutting through the store on a beeline to the mall proper, Connie and Stacey were in the process of dodging through the maze of promotional displays placed in the aisles when they were momentarily distracted by a scene at one of the cash registers.

“But Mommy, I don’t like those dresses,” complained a little girl who looked to be about 5 or 6 years old.

“Honey, we’ve gone over this time and time again. For once and for all, you need new clothes for school, and that’s the end of the discussion,” said a woman, apparently the girl’s mother, who was holding a pile of girl’s outfits in one hand while trying to open her purse with other. She was a rather large and imposing woman, both tall and quite chubby. She had short blond hair and was wearing a blue v-neck tank top, jean shorts, and expensive athletic shoes. Connie guessed she was in her early thirties.

The big blond handed her credit card to the clerk, who was doing her best to cheer up the little girl.

“Are you starting first grade this year?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the girl.

“And don’t you like all the pretty clothes your Mom is getting you?”

“I know mommy is trying to buy me nice things, but I just don’t like those dumb dresses,” the little girl explained.

“But they’re so pretty!” the clerk beamed. “I’ll bet your Mom picked them out especially for you.”

“I know...” sighed the girl. “Mommy won’t let me pick them out myself.”

“Now, Linda, you’re too young to know what to buy. I’m just trying to buy you things that will look decent when you go back to school next week,” sighed her mother.

Just as Connie and Stacey were walking out of earshot, they heard the mother make one last attempt to cheer up her daughter. As if on cue, the woman added, “Linda, If I were your age, I’d love to be able to wear these clothes.”

Connie and Stacey looked at each other and started giggling, an obvious idea for trying out the age changing device suddenly having been handed to them. Having both been recently subjected to the humiliating annual ritual of selecting school clothes under the guidance (or censorship) of their own mother, the sisters could not imagine any better instant karma than to give Linda’s mother an opportunity to demonstrate the truth of her expressed sentiment - namely, that Mom would simply love to be able to wear the clothes she had picked out for her daughter. Normally, that would be impossible. With the age control, Connie and Stacey realized that one small zap was perfectly capable of changing the rather chubby thirty-something soccer mom into a first grade schoolgirl the same age and size as her own daughter.

The girls stepped into a nearby aisle, pretending to be looking at some merchandise while Connie found a secluded vantage point behind a display that afforded a good view of the cash register area.

She had planned to aim the control toward the mother at the cash register, but noticed that the clerk and another woman customer who was now standing in line behind the fat blond and her daughter were preventing her from getting a clear view of her initial target. Connie glanced at the three hapless women standing in the front of the check out area. Besides the mother, there was the clerk, who looked like she was maybe college age, and the other customer, who looked to be about 40.

There was no readily apparent method that the remote control could be aimed precisely to pick one person out of a crowd, especially at a distance of more than 50 feet. Connie mentally shrugged, aimed the device at the woman to the best of her ability, and pressed the button.

Where a moment before stood three adult women, there were now three little girls. Their clothing had remained the same size, and for a moment, the regressed women stared at one another in shock, struggling with their suddenly oversized apparel.

The formerly overweight soccer mom was now about the same height and size as her five year old daughter. She had lost her shorts and panties, which had dropped straight off of her hips and lay in a large heap around her feet. Her tank top hung on her like a full length robe.

The other customer who had been standing in line was no longer a woman in her forties. She had been reduced to a ten year old girl about the same size as Stacey.

At first, Connie couldn’t see what had happened to the clerk - she appeared to have disappeared behind the counter on which the cash register sat. After a few seconds, a toddler crawled out from behind, still wearing a long sleeved white top with a store nametag attached. The little girl appeared confused as she looked up her surroundings with wide blue eyes and an open mouth.

“Mommy - what happened to everyone?” Linda exclaimed. “You’re little like me!”

“No, no, this can’t be! Linda, find someone to help us!” shrieked the panic stricken little blond girl who was Linda’s mother.

“Oh my god,” gasped the older girl, struggling with her overly large clothing. “We’ve been changed into kids.”

The tot - who had been a rather buxom college sophmore just seconds before - began to cry. “I don’t wanna be widdle,” she wailed. “My cwothes don’t fit.”

Standing some distance away, Connie silently motioned for Stacey to follow her as she hurried off toward the main entrance from the store leading into the mall itself, leaving the three drastically downsized victims to contemplate what had happened to them.

=====

“You shouldn’t have shrunk Mom before we had a chance to eat dinner,” complained Stacey.

“Stacey, quit being so grouchy,” Connie admonished her sister.

“But I’m really hungry,” continued Stacey.

“Hmmm...well, OK. Let’s get something to eat,” suggested Connie. “There’s a McBurgers next to Sears.”

When the girls arrived at the fast food eatery, it was the peak of the dinner hour. Most of the tables at McBurger’s were full, and a long line of hungry shoppers looking for a fast meal extended back from the counter.

“Hi,” smiled a teen girl with braces behind the counter. The name tag on the front of her shirt read TIFFANY. “May I help you?”

“Oh, Hi,” replied Connie. Knowing from long experience what Stacey liked to eat, Connie gave Tiffany her and Stacey’s order. Tiffany walked back to get their burgers, fries, and Cokes.

“Should I make her a little bit younger?” hissed Connie to her sister when Tiffany had stepped back behind the counter.

“Go ahead,” encouraged Stacey.

Connie pulled out the control. Making sure no one was watching, she aimed it at Tiffany’s back and very briefly pressed the regression key. Watching attentively, the girls saw Tiffany loose a couple of inches of height. Although she had no idea of what had happened, the unsuspecting sixteen year old high school junior had just been reduced to a fourteen year old high school freshman.

When Tiffany returned to the counter with the food, something seemed a bit out of place. The girl she was waiting on seemed taller than she remembered.

“Your fries will be up in just a minute,” Tiffany indicated. She unconsciously hitched up her pants, which caused Connie and Stacey to burst into muffled laughter. When the hapless teen turned her back to the counter to check on the progress of the order, Connie directed the age changer at her and again gave the button a quick touch.

Tiffany lost a few more inches, and now appeared to be only a year or two older than Connie. Her breasts had disappeared into the folds on her oversized shirt, and the rest of her clothes looked distinctly droopy on her substantially smaller frame.

“That’ll be $6.59,” she smiled as she handed Connie the food, struggling a bit with the tray. Tiffany didn’t remember the counter being quite so high.

“I don’t think so,” said Connie.

Tiffany hesitated a minute, not sure what to do. Connie aimed the control at Tiffany and pressed the button again, once more reducing the former teen’s stature by several years.

Tiffany now looked eye to eye at Connie. She looked down at herself and frowned in puzzlement when saw how big and loose her uniform suddenly seemed. Her pants were nearly falling off, and her hands looked much smaller.

“Hey - what happened? What did you do to me?” she demanded. She noticed that her voice sounded different.

“Hey, where’d Tiffany go?” asked another teen girl who approached the counter, apparently one of Tiffany’s coworkers. She suddenly looked at the somewhat familiar youngster in the oversized uniform and did a double take.

“Tiff - is that you?” she asked, squinting as she stared at the girl who from all indications looked like she was only ten or eleven years old.

“Jenny, what happened to me?” wailed Tiffany, finding to her surprise and discomfort that her petite friend Jenny was now much taller than she was. Or had been.

“Tiffany - you’ve...you’ve shrunk!” exclaimed Jennifer, gaping in wide mouthed wonder at her youthened friend.

While the downsized preteen Tiffany and her still teenaged friend Jennifer tried to comprehend what had happened, Connie and Stacey disappeared into the crowd with their food.

=====

“Tiffany’s is Marlene’s older sister,” explained Connie. Marlene was one of Connie’s friends, and Marlene was constantly regaling Connie with complaints about the alleged cruelty of her older sibling. Connie vaguely wondered if Marlene would appreciate the fact that she had rearranged things so that her older sister Tiffany was a few years younger. Quite a bit younger, actually, since she had reduced Tiffany to back to Marlene’s age.

“Watch this,” said Connie, aiming the control box toward the line of people being served at the counter. She hesitated for a second, glanced around to make sure nobody was paying any attention to what she was doing, and then pushed the reducing button and held it down.

Connie rapidly flicked the beam across front of the restaurant. Uniformed workers standing behind the counter, dozens of customers waiting in lines, and groups seated in the front of the dining area were hit by the youth ray at random as Connie clandestinely swept the device across the room before inconspicuously dropping it back into her purse.

The youthening ray had a dramatic and instantaneous effect on the unsuspecting people it touched. Both onlookers and victims stood and stared at one another, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

From where Connie and Stacey stood, several workers waiting on customers behind the cash registers seemed to disappear momentarily. They had suddenly become so young that only the very tops of their heads could be seen behind the counter. The (formerly) teen crew members looked around in astonishment at their dwindled coworkers as the toddlers gradually discovered that they were too short to reach the cash registers or soda dispensers.

Adults waiting at the front of the line who had been struck by the youthening rays found that their height was reduced to the point where they could barely reach over the counter. Customers who were seated nearby suddenly discovered they were too short to reach the food on their tables.

=====

“Aunt Patty, what happened to you? Look at everyone! How come you’re all so small?”

“Oh my God...sweetheart, help me carry this tray,” said a little red-haired girl, dressed in a red tank top that was now about the size of a nightshirt. Adult sized pants had fallen to the floor around her ankles.

=====

“They must be around here somewhere,” said Sharon, peering around in all directions in the hope of spying her daughters. She found it difficult to see very far, since she was now so much shorter than the groups of adults (and most of the children) shopping in the mall.

“How are we going to stop them?” asked Lori. “Connie seems pretty trigger happy with that youth ray remote control. If Connie or her sister see us, chances look pretty good that she’ll just zap us with it again.”

Lori was being accurate in her portrayal of Connie and Stacey’s prolific and unhesitating use of the device. As Lisa, Lori, and Sharon had proceeded through the mall, they were greeted by dozens of incongruous scenes that had resulted from unsuspecting people suddenly being rendered many years (and often decades) younger. It was easy to spot the many victims - bewildered children and young teens of all ages wearing (or trying to hold onto) vastly oversized clothes. Some were crying, some looked shocked or were frozen in a state of disbelief, and some were trying to explain their appearance to other children or adults.

“I guess we’ll just have to be careful,” said Lisa. Initially, she was halfway hoping that she actually would get zapped by the youth ray - it would be really nice to lose five or ten years. As the trio continued hunting for the girls, however, Lisa realized that most of the victims had received quite a bit more youth than they probably would have volunteered for. It appeared that few of the people who had been hit by the device remained over the age of puberty. Lisa wanted to be a bit younger, not turned into a kid again like poor Lori.

“Hey - I’ve got an idea,” Lori volunteered. “Sooner or later, they’re going to have to use the restroom. I’ll betcha that Connie leaves that age-reducing thing on the shelf when she uses the stall.”

“So?” asked Sharon.

Lori was streetwise enough to remember that women were often advised to avoid placing their purses or other valuables on shelves or hooks in toilet stalls, since a thief could reach over the side and take them. This bit of knowledge had given her an idea.

“We’ll keep our distance and follow them until they go into the Ladies’ Room. Connie and Stacey would recognize us if they saw us, but they don’t know Lisa, so they shouldn’t be too suspicious of her. Lisa should be able to just walk up and make a sudden grab for it.”

=====

Connie and Stacey walked nonchalantly through the mall, both of them keeping an eye out for opportunities to use the age changing device. In the time-honored tradition of kids everywhere, one of Connie and Stacey’s greatest enjoyments was to periodically find new ways of embarrassing the various adult authority figures in their lives. It was one (barely) socially acceptable way children had to compensate for their relatively unempowered status in the overall hierarchy of modern society. The age altering control changed all of that - possession of the device had suddenly and unexpectedly upset the usual balance of power and made Connie and Stacey’s wildest dreams possible. They could reduce any all-powerful grown up they wanted to a child their own age - or younger.

Connie and Stacey found that it was particularly funny to use the age changing device on groups - especially when it was a group of various ages. Their favorite exploit was to find an adult accompanied by one or more children, and then using the youth ray to reduce the (former) grownup to become the youngest in the crowd.

It took no more than the slightest whim or whimsy for the girls to unleash their incredible new power on a hapless and unsuspecting subject - and the mall was full of targets.

======

Connie accidentally discovered a new and previously unknown feature of the control box. The new feature turned up during Connie and Stacey’s sojourn into the Lady Footlocker store.

“Hi. Can I help you girls?” asked a rather tall teenaged girl, who was wearing a green golf shirt and tan khaki pants. The sisters could see that the small nametag on her shirt read “Rebecca”. Rebecca had short blond hair and was very pretty.

“We have to get some shoes for our PE class,” lied Connie. “Our mom will be here in a few minutes, so she told us to go ahead and pick out some shoes we like in the meantime.”

“I like those,” said Stacey, pointing at a pair of athletic shoes on display.

“Great. Let me go get something to measure your feet with,” offered Rebecca, who turned her back on the girls as she walked toward the back of the store.

“Watch this,” chuckled Connie, producing the age changing device and pointing it toward the unsuspecting young woman.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” whispered Stacey as she watched Connie brandish the device. “Let’s see what one of the other buttons does this time,” she suggested.

“Alright,” agreed Connie. She pressed the button next to the one she had been using to make people younger.

Watching carefully, they could clearly see that Rebecca, her back turned to the girls, was beginning to shrink. The girls giggled as they watched her unwittingly become younger. This time, however, something slightly different happened. To their amazement and delight, Rebecca’s clothes - instead of being unaffected - were actually shrinking right along with her. Even her shoes were apparently included in the effect.

In a minute, Rebecca had located the foot measuring device and returned to assist her young customers. As she approached Connie and Stacey, she felt vaguely ill at ease. The girls seemed much taller than she had remembered.

“Uh...huh...umm...,” muttered Rebecca, feeling momentarily disoriented. “Hey - what’s wrong with my voice?” she complained, trying to clear her throat. Her voice sounded high pitched, almost soprano.

Connie managed to contain her laughter. It was obvious that Rebecca was no longer a teenager. Because Rebecca’s clothes had diminished to fit her reduced size, she apparently wasn’t yet aware of what had happened to her.

“How...how did you...I mean, how come you’re so tall all of a sudden?” asked Rebecca, puzzled by the fact that she was now about two inches shorter than Connie.

“We’re still the same size,” explained Stacey. “But look at yourself in the mirror.”

“What the heck...?” gasped Rebecca as she looked at her reflection. Her mouth dropped open. A ten year old child with a freckled face peered back at her. Rebecca looked like she belonged back in middle school. Somehow, her clothes had been miniaturized to perfectly fit her new size. “Oh shit...I’m smaller,” she wailed in disbelief. “What happened to me?”

The knit green shirt Rebecca was wearing, to which her employee nametag was still pinned, had decreased in size to fit her new girlish dimensions. It clearly showed (by the conspicuous lack of any bumps in front) that Rebecca not yet reached the age of puberty.

“C’mon, Connie...let’s get going,” hollered Stacey, who was already scampering out of the store towards the mall.

“Wait...no, you can’t just leave me here. You can’t leave me like this,” pleaded Rebecca, raising both of her hands and pressing them against her flat chest where her breasts used to be.

At that moment, Rebecca’s coworker Lizbeth emerged from the back of the store.

“Rebecca?” she asked, looked down in puzzlement at her diminutive coworker.

Rebecca looked up at Lizbeth and tried hard not to cry. Lizbeth was so much larger than she was now!

“What happened to you?” asked Lizbeth, scrutinizing the ten year old girl who bore an uncanny resemblance to her coworker.

“Those two girls - they shrunk me,” squealed Rebecca, pointing out the door in the direction that Sarah and Connie had gone.

“Holy shit! You look like you’re maybe ten years old at most,” gasped Lizbeth, still staring at Rebecca.

“I know,” said Rebecca, looking up with pleading eyes into Lizbeth’s face. “Lizbeth, what am I going to do now?”

“Gosh, Rebecca...I don’t know what to say,” replied Lizbeth in a sympathetic voice. She was at a total loss on what advice to give a friend who had suddenly had her body reduced to that of a ten year old girl.

“Look at me...the clothes I was wearing all shrunk with me too,” marveled Rebecca.

Lizbeth noticed that she could still see the outline of a bra beneath Rebecca’s knit top. Although in her present condition Rebecca wouldn’t have a practical need to wear a bra for at least a couple of years, it evidently had been reduced to fit along with Rebecca’s other clothing. Even her shoes and socks had shrunk to fit.

Unfortunately, the effect extended only to shrink the apparel that Rebecca had been wearing. Lizbeth and Rebecca discovered that Rebecca’s jacket, which was on a hanger near the employee entrance, had retained its original size, and was consequently much too big for Rebecca to wear. She clearly wasn’t big enough to wear even the smallest Junior sizes anymore, and wouldn’t grow back into most of her clothing for another seven years.

======

A few storefronts beyond the Lady Footlocker was one of the girls’ favorite stores - Old Navy. Connie and Stacey casually strolled into the store, which was nearly empty. The only people they could see were a blond teenager waiting while a sales clerk was totaling up her purchase.

Connie estimated that the sales clerk was about college age, somewhere in her early twenties. She aimed in the right general direction and pressed the activation button on the regression device.

“Hey! What happened?” squeaked Kathy. No longer a college age woman, she was now six years old. From Kathy’s vantage point, the world had suddenly become larger. The counter had risen up to her new eye level, and the cash register had somehow become too high for her to easily reach.

Kathy noticed that her clothes suddenly felt heavy. Looking down at herself, she discovered that her entire outfit had become much too large for her to wear. She managed to grab her belt just in time to prevent her floppy pants from sliding off to the floor.

“Hey! You shrunk!” gasped the young teen girl on the other side of the counter.

“How in the world..?” said Kathy, pure confusion in her voice. Looking up, Kathy could clearly see that her teenage customer was now at least a foot taller than she was!

“You’re like all little,” exclaimed the surprised teen, looking down at the little girl who a second before had been taller than she was.

“What happened? Look at me,” six year old Kathy wailed in confusion.

==========

As the trio entered the mall, Lori noticed what seemed to be an unusually large crowd gathered around one of the restaurants near the central courtyard. As Lori approached the area, followed closely by Sharon and Lisa, she could see that the McBurgers entrance had been cordoned off with yellow police tape, and that a group of police officers had arrived on the scene to control the mob. Several of the officers were apparently taking official statements, scribbling rapidly on clipboards as various persons in the crowd related their observations.

“Excuse me, m’am,” said Lori, as she hurried toward a woman at the nearby mall information counter who was momentarily unoccupied. “Why are all the police here? Was their a robbery or something?”

The woman looked down at Lori with a condescending smile. “No, honey. There was no robbery or anything like that. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Lori bristled with anger and glared at the woman. She was being dismissed like an overly curious 8 year old - which, physically, she appeared to be.

Lisa and Sharon approached. Lisa could tell from Lori’s unhappy expression that she had not been successful in finding out what had happened. “Um...please don’t bother the busy lady, Lori. I’m sure she’s got her hands full right how.”

“Hi,” smiled the woman, directing her attention to Lisa. “Are these your daughters?” she queried, nodding toward Lori and Sharon.

“Uh...um...yeah, they’re both mine,” smiled Lisa.

“How old are they?” she asked, smiling at the girls.

“Well...gosh...uh, Lori here is in the third grade now, and...uh...Sharon just started Kindergarten this year,” lied Lisa, conscious of the dirty looks she was getting from her two reluctant ?children’. “Gee, what’s all the excitement?”

The woman stepped to one side and lowered her voice so that only Lisa could hear her. “Nothing to worry about, it’s not an armed robbery or anything like that. I didn’t want to upset you or your daughters, but we got a bunch of 9-1-1 calls starting about twenty minutes ago. We think some people shopping in the mall may have been suffering from mental illness or something. The calls sounded like they were having hallucinations.”

“Hallucinations?” asked Lisa, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, it’s pretty weird. Maybe like a mass hysteria. We’ve got all these kids dressed up in oversized clothes, trying to tell us that they’re really adults, claiming they were suddenly shrunk down to a younger age. There must be at least thirty of them insisting on this crazy story.

“Then we have a bunch of adults who say they actually saw this magic happening. What wild imaginations these folks must have.”

“It sounds pretty crazy to me,” agreed Lisa. “Thanks for the scoop.” She turned back toward Lori and Sharon. “C’mon, girls,” said Lisa, motioning them away from the crowd.

“Well, now what are we going to do?” asked Sharon once they were out of earshot.

“I say, stick to the original plan,” replied Lori. “We can wait until one of them uses the restroom.”

“We should be able to find them pretty easily,” Lisa agreed.

=====

A girl with who looked to be of preschool age was trying her best to push a stroller containing a baby. She was so short that she was having a difficult time reaching the handle.

“Somebody please help me!” the little blond girl cried, floundering inside her huge sleeveless dress. It was now so much longer than necessary that it slid along the floor behind her, and one of her shoulders was now exposed through the open neck. She had already stumbled out of her shoes.

=====

Three women were engaged in conversation with a toddler. The women and the little girl were all wearing business clothes. The three year old girl, who looked quite distraught, was dressed in a perfectly tailored miniature power suit and was wearing toddler-sized black hosiery and high heels.

“I am not a little kid! This can’t be happening to me!” Lisa overheard the toddler saying as she walked past.

=====

Donna Larson was in the Zale’s jewelry store, checking out the wedding rings. The saleswoman in back of the counter was showing her several selections when they both noticed two girls walking past the front of store at a brisk pace. One of the girls was holding what appeared to be a small remote control, which she aimed toward them.

The glass counter suddenly started to grow higher, and in seconds it was over Donna’s head. Donna looked around in confusion, and noticed that the sleeves of her dress were now very baggy and so long that they hung past her hands. What was happening to her?

“Hey!”

Donna heard a child squeal somewhere on the other side of the counter - she was no longer tall enough to see over it. Looking through the display glass, she saw a little girl with dark hair frowning as she tried to straighten out the adult-sized blouse she was wearing. It was the saleswoman, reduced to the size of a child.

She and Donna were both now four years old.

=====

Sharon knew her daughters well enough to recognize that they each had a bit of a jealous streak, and she had delivered several motherly lectures aimed at curbing their youthful envy. Connie was now at the awkward age where budding young ladies become hypersensitive to the size and shape of their growing bodies, and no doubt some of this mania had been communicated to her younger sister.

There were more than two dozen customers and clerks who were unfortunate enough to be in the Victoria’s Secret store when Connie and Stacey happened to be walking by with the age changer. Sharon suspected strongly that Connie and Stacey had made it a special point to reduce the particularly well-endowed females to humiliatingly younger and smaller sizes, or - even worse - to reduce them back to prepubescent girls, rendering them completely flat chested.

Peering through the windows, it was clear that the girls had worked quite a bit of mischief. Most of the unsuspecting women who had been shopping in the store looked like they would now have to wait a few years before they would need to wear a bra again. It was hard to tell in most cases, since the clothing the shoppers had been wearing no longer showed off their figures - all of the customers’ dresses, sweaters, tops and pants had been rendered many sizes too large. The loose, baggy outfits made it difficult to see what - if anything - remained of the young teens’ breast and hip development.

The distraught thirty-something manager was now only about 12 years old. She had gone from wearing a 36 inch C cup to nothing larger than a training bra. Sharon felt sorry for her, but the manager was actually relatively fortunate - several nearby customers were now four year olds, and at least one toddler was crying on the floor near a pile of clothes she had been wearing just a few minutes before.

A sad looking preschooler with medium length curly brown hair stood in front of a three-way dressing mirror, holding up a vastly oversized bra up to her chest, while her older friend (a thirtyish woman who had apparently been lucky enough to avoid the youth ray) tried to comfort her.

“Don’t worry, Teri...we should find out soon that there’s some explanation for this. I’m sure this is probably just some temporary effect...”

=====

Tracy Logan was headed toward the fitting room at Donaldson’s women’s department with two dresses to try on when she noticed two young girls hurrying past her. Having no reason to pay them any attention, she turned her back and didn’t notice as one of the girls pointed at small box in her direction. By the time she reached the fitting room, Tracy was no longer 28 years old.

In the fitting room, Tracy placed the dresses on a hanger and began to disrobe. She easily slipped out of her pants and pulled off her turtleneck sweater, carefully placing them on a shelf. Her underwear somehow didn’t feel right - she needed to adjust her bra. She experienced a great deal of difficulty as she reached around to unhook the clasp on the back. It was almost as though her bra had somehow grown larger. It was then that Tracy realized that her bra wasn’t just large - it was absolutely huge. Both cups drooped down all the way to her navel. Her panties likewise seemed to have become much larger; the elastic band around the top was barely tight enough to hold them up.

Suddenly afraid, Tracy noticed that the dresses she was planning to try on were now difficult to reach - as if the hangers were higher. Or, she realized belatedly, as if she had become shorter. She panicked when she finally took a look in the mirror. Instead of a 28 year old woman, Tracy saw a flat-chested 3rd or 4th grade girl dressed in enormous underwear.

“Help! Please, something weird happened to me!” she yelped as she struggled out of the dressing room, doing her best to hold onto her clothing. Tracy had left her hopelessly outsized pants behind, since she was now small enough to use her own sweater as a dress.

=====

Gabrielle Mathews was a practical woman who appreciated the value of a dollar saved. Gaby had made a quick trip over to the mall to take advantage of a sale on bath towels. She had expected the entire excursion to be uneventful and to take no more than 10 minutes of her time. Unfortunately for her, Gaby had become another more or less random recipient of Sara and Connie’s age reducing treatment.

Gaby vividly remembered her last few moments as an adult - she had been striding through the store, on her way to the bed and bath department, and had stopped for just a moment to check prices in the personal care aisle. Ironically (considering what was about to happen to her), Gaby had just picked up a box of tampons when she felt a subtle, weird sensation pass through her. When she tried to put the box back on the same shelf, she discovered that it was now a long reach over her head. Puzzled, Gaby stepped back into the main aisle, only to find that all of the other people in the store now towered over her - as if they had somehow grown into giants. It took what seemed like a long and confusing minute or so for Gaby to figure out that it wasn’t her surroundings that had changed, it was her. She had shrunk - and from examining her own body, and noticing that her womanly attributes had somehow dwindled back to prepubescent proportions, it took Gaby only a short while to discover that she had somehow been changed into a little girl.

Just before she had zapped Gaby from behind, Connie had accidentally set the age changer to the “adjust clothes size” mode she had first used on the sales girl in the Lady Footlocker store. Gaby was thus part of the small minority of age regression victims who were spared the embarrassment of literally shrinking right out of her own clothing in the middle of a public place. Because Gaby’s clothes (a simple red polo shirt and plain black slacks) had been reduced to fit her six year old physique just as well as it had fit her mature woman’s body, she initially had a much more difficult time convincing others that she was (or rather had been) an adult. Fortunately, there were enough similarly reduced grown ups wearing proportionately miniaturized clothing in the vicinity that Gaby was eventually able to convince the authorities of her identity.

At nearly six feet tall, Gaby was used to towering above the crowd. As a child, she was now not quite four feet tall, and had a tough time getting used to looking up at virtually everyone. Other than the clothes she had been wearing when she was shrunk by the age ray, absolutely nothing in Gaby’s entire wardrobe would even come close to fitting her as a six year old.

=====

Connie and Stacey were too absorbed in their fun to notice that they were being trailed. Lisa, Lori, and Sharon tailed them for nearly an hour, being careful to stay sufficiently far away that the sisters would be unlikely to discover them. Finally, as they observed from a safe vantage point, Connie entered the Ladies Room.

“Now’s our chance!” hissed Lori to her friends.

After a short wait, Lisa casually walked into restroom. It was nearly empty. Lisa discovered the toilet stall Connie was using. Peering through the narrow opening between the door and wall, Lisa spied what looked like a remote control on the inside shelf of Connie’s stall.

Lisa entered the stall next to Connie’s, as if to use the toilet. When Lisa heard the toilet flush, she knew she had only a few moments to spare. Without further pretense, Lisa suddenly stood up, reached over the top of the partition, and quickly snatched the device off the shelf. She grabbed the control so quickly and quietly that Connie didn’t even notice. Lisa quickly departed before Connie had a chance to realize that anything was amiss.

=====

“I got it!” exclaimed Lisa to her two young friends as she showed them the device.

“That’s it!” beamed Lori with delight as she saw that Lisa had retrieved her one possible chance of escaping her unwanted second childhood and becoming a fully grown adult woman again. Now all she had to do was figure out how to activate the reverse function.

Lori tried her best to sound confident and optimistic, but in fact she was trying to convince herself as much as her friends that the age changing device actual did possess some sort of ability to reverse the youthening effect. If it didn’t, and she had to grow up again day by day...well, that was nearly unthinkable. Lori fought off a feeling of despair, unwilling to consider that there was a very good possibility that she was going to be stuck as an eight year old child.

=====

Connie looked everywhere to no avail. Apparently, the magic remote control had disappeared. After checking every possible logical place multiple times, Connie was exhausted and reluctantly forced to accept the fact that the device was gone forever.

“But - how are we going to change Mommy back? And what about Ms. Anderson?” asked Stacey.

Connie started thinking about the dozens of people that she and Stacey had exposed to the youth ray. Besides her mom and Stacey’s teacher, there were all of the strangers they had encountered on their way to the mall. Without any way for them to get changed back to their original ages, their lives would be permanently changed in many unexpected ways.

=====

With the control firmly in her hand and ready to use, Lori entered the restroom right behind Lisa. Sharon immediately spotted Connie and Stacey in the otherwise empty room. Her and Lori stepped out from behind Lisa and confronted the girls.

“Mom? Miss Sheffield?” asked Connie, surprised to see them. Connie smiled inwardly as she noted that her mom was wearing some of Stacey’s old clothes, which fit her new, smaller body rather well.

“When I get you girls home, you are both going to get the spanking of your life,” said five year old Sharon.

“She’s got the remote!” exclaimed Stacey, her eyes growing wide as she saw what Lori was holding.

“Sorry, Connie and Stacey,” said Lori as she aimed at the sisters and pressed the activation button.

Connie and Stacey got a taste of their own medicine as they found themselves rapidly shrinking inside their clothing. In just a few seconds, both of the girls were reduced to infancy. Lisa helped Lori and Sharon gather up the two squirming baby girls, and they all made their way back through the mall (still a scene of mayhem and confusion) to the car.

=====

Lori studied the buttons on the device carefully. Getting it back had been only a small part of the battle; now she had to figure out if there was a way to increase her age using it. She remembered her panic when she had first changed herself into a child, and how she had desperately tried to press each and every button on the box without any effect at all. This time, Lori was determined to take a careful, systematic approach.

She noticed that one of the small, round recessed buttons was slightly different than the others. They were all metallic in appearance; however, looking carefully, she saw the button in the lower right hand corner had a gold, rather than silver, coloration. It was barely noticeable. She had a sudden brainstorm. What if the golden hued button worked like a shift key?

Lori hesitated a moment before trying an experiment. She worried for a moment that if her guess was wrong, she could wind up even younger than she was now. It was bad enough being eight years old again - how would she deal with being shrunk down to even a younger age, say four or five like poor Sharon? Or what if it changed her all the way back into a toddler or...heaven forbid...a newborn baby?

Realizing she ultimately had no choice but to try something or remain a 3rd grade girl forever, Lori pressed and held the gold key while simultaneously pressing the key that had originally regressed her back to childhood. The was an emission of blue light, just like those she remembered seeing whenever the device had been activated. Closing her eyes with determination, she continued to press both of the buttons.

In a moment, she felt her body subtly change. She released the control, determined to check out what effect the device was producing - hopefully, before it had a chance to make her very much younger than she had already become, in the event her guess was wrong.

As she walked to the mirror, Lori realized that the borrowed girl’s clothing she was wearing seemed to be much tighter. A look in the mirror confirmed her fondest hope - Lori realized that the device had functioned in reverse - it had made her older! Only a year or so...but it was definitely noticeable in the way the clothing she had borrowed from Stacey no longer fit very well and in the fact that she had gained an inch or two of height. Even Stacey’s shoes were a bit too tight for her feet.

Lori scrambled back to where she had left the control and headed toward her bathroom. She quickly stripped off her girl-sized ensemble and undies, realizing that they would either rip or strangle her if she continued to wear them while growing back to the size of a woman. Standing naked next to the shower, she pressed the combination of buttons on the control again, this time knowing what the effect would be.

She let out her breath with a mixture of relief and amazement as her body began to change while she watched. Her height gradually increased, and her chest tingled and hurt for a moment as she re-entered puberty. Her nipples became larger and darker colored as two small breast buds began to swell out slightly from her chest. The little cones gradually grew larger and rounder. They continued to expand (although not nearly as much as Lori would have liked) while her hips widened and a cloud of soft, curly pubic hair sprouted around her genitals. Lori watched in the mirror - which was much easier to see now that she had regained her adult height - as her soft facial features became sharper and better defined. In just a few seconds, she had regained her “normal” appearance, and released the buttons.

“Thank god,” she sighed to herself, rejoicing to discover that her girl’s soprano voice had once again become a womanly contralto. “Welcome back, girls,” she chuckled to herself as she cupped her modest breasts with both hands, appreciating their weight. For the first time since her adventure had started, she realized needed to wear a bra - a real one, not just a training bra. She was perfectly happy to discover that she once again nicely filled out the cups of her own underwear.

Lori’s pleasure was immeasurable as she walked into her own closet and picked out a pair of comfortable jeans and a favorite tank top. No longer oversized and baggy, they both fit her trim but mature body perfectly again.

Feeling normal for the first time in what seemed like ages, Lori suddenly remembered that her friend Sharon was still stuck as a five year old. She hurried down the stairs.

“I feel great!” said Lori as she returned to her living room, where Sharon and Lisa waited.

“Lori - you did it! You’re a grownup - again, I mean!” exclaimed Sharon.

“Gee - looks like you’re back to normal,” remarked Lisa with a smile on her face. “I was almost thinking that you were going to have to go through puberty all over again. I mean, the slow way.”

“Thank goodness no,” Lori laughed. “I really hated being so short. Not to mention being flat chested,” she added, cupping her breasts with her hands. “They may not be the biggest in the world, but they’re still better than nothing.”

“Lori...can you...uh...grow me back now?” asked Sharon, staring rather wistfully at the two mounds pushing out from the front of Lori’s sweater. Now that both Lisa and Lori towered over her, Sharon felt even smaller and more out of place as a five year old girl.

Lori suggested they follow the same procedure she had used. They stepped into Lori’s bedroom for a bit more privacy. Sharon removed her clothes (actually, her daughter’s clothes) and stood naked in the middle of the room while Lisa and Lori looked on.

“Well - are you all set?” queried Lori, holding the control in her hand.

“Ready,” replied Sharon. She felt a bit uncomfortable standing completely naked in front of Lisa and Lori, but understood why it was necessary.

“O.K. - Here goes,” responded Lori. She pointed the front of the control at Sharon and carefully pressed the same combination of buttons she had used to restore her own body to womanhood.

There was a long moment of anticipation before the strange emanations from the device began to effect Sharon in any noticeable way. After a slight latency, Lori and Lisa saw that Sharon was unmistakably growing taller inch by inch. As Sharon continued to gain height, the area around her nipples began to swell and a bush of light colored pubic hair sprouted above her genitals as she matured from a girl into a woman once more. Her nipples and breasts grew larger, and her hips began to widen. In a minute, Sharon was an adult again. A few moments later, Sharon’s breasts started to sag a bit and a few laugh lines appeared on her face. Sharon began to put on a bit of weight and had developed a very slight pot belly when Lori released the button. Sharon was roughly the same age as she had been before her encounter with the youthening box.

“It worked,” observed Lisa.

“Thank heavens!” remarked Sharon, staring down at her restored body. “I guess I need to put on some clothes.”

=====

After considerable effort, Sharon managed to set up an old playpen in Connie’s bedroom, and deposited her two “baby” daughters inside. At their present age, it would be an effective confinement. Their clothes were too big for them; Sharon used a couple of old towels and some safety pins to create some makeshift diapers.

“Just so you learn from your behavior, you’re going to stay babies at least until next week,” said Sharon, directing her best parental disapproval look at the bawling infants. Eventually, Connie and Stacey stopped crying and fell asleep.

Sharon went downstairs, where Lisa and Lori were watching the local TV news. There was live coverage of breaking news at the Eastgate Mall, where - according to the reporter on the scene - there appeared to be an outbreak of mass hysteria. There were scores of children claiming that they were really adults who had been involuntarily reduced in age. The camera panned over the scene in the parking lot, where police had cordoned off the entrance and were in the process of interviewing witnesses.

“We’ll have to figure out some way to get all those poor people changed back to normal,” said Lori, feeling sorry for the victims as she watched the televised scenes of children, ranging in age from “tweens” down to toddlers, mostly in various stages of dishabille trying to hold on to their colossal garments. Having just experienced the predicament of being an adult stuck in a child’s body first hand, Lori empathized with them. She reflected that at least she had the benefit of knowing the source of her unexpected youth, while the dozens of innocent people that Connie and Stacey had randomly regressed had no idea of what had happened to them. One moment they had been casually shopping, the next second they were years or decades younger.

Just as Lori had, the victims would have to deal not only with their own disorientation at being changed from adults to kids, but with the reactions of their friends and relatives - children, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, coworkers and employers. As far as they knew, their new sizes were going to be permanent. Because she hadn’t remained a child for long, Lori felt fortunate that she had avoided some of the more embarrassing scenarios one could imagine - such as shopping for clothes in the girl’s section. Lori vowed that she would not only do her best to track down all of the bystanders who had been regressed and use the age control to restore them back to their normal physical maturity, but that she would do so as soon as possible. Although it would take a bit longer than she would have preferred, Lori knew she would have to reverse each victim’s regression surreptitiously on a one by one basis to avoid drawing attention to herself - after all, she wanted to keep the “remote control”, and any overt public display and/or demonstration of its abilities would probably result in it being appropriated by some government agency. Now Lori knew, at least in very general terms, how it functioned, and the secret was shared (if one was willing to discount Sharon’s daughters) only by herself, Sharon, and Lisa. And by the original owner - whoever (or whatever) that may have been.

Before putting it away in her purse, Lori looked once again at the mysterious device she had found. Where had it originally come from? How did it wind up being left on a table in a crowded cafeteria? Besides the many intriguing questions surrounding the control’s origins, there was a definite element of power and excitement associated with the ability to alter the age of anyone she wanted. Indeed, just the idea of it was rather intoxicating. Lori’s 15th year high school reunion was coming up in a couple of months. She speculated on the possibility of secretly adding a few years to some of her former rivals. Or perhaps changing them into infants in front of all their friends. Lori smiled, knowing that the future held many possibilities.

=========

THE END - for now

 

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