Lori’s Continuing AR Adventure – Out of Control

Chapter 1
Part 1

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Lori Sheffield sighed as she entered her kitchen and prepared to make a very late lunch, glad to have a few minutes at home to relax before heading off to a sales meeting scheduled to last all afternoon through dinnertime. It had been an extremely busy morning for the 32 year old assistant sales manager, culminating in a quick final stop at coworker Christine Vanowski’s house to pick up the final draft of next month’s newspaper promotion.

Lori placed a Diet Watcher’s frozen entr?e into the microwave and hit the start button. While she was waiting for her lunch to heat up, she reflected momentarily on the recent series of strange events that had disrupted her previously rather dull life.

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It had all started three weeks ago when Lori found a strange remote control apparently abandoned on a table in a cafeteria.

After discovering the incredible abilities of the mysterious device - by accidentally changing herself into a child - Lori had gone to her neighbor Sharon for help. Unfortunately, Sharon’s two young daughters had absconded with the control and - after changing their mother into a five year old - proceeded on a rampage of age changing shenanigans at a nearby shopping center, reducing dozens of bargain hunters into children of various ages (and growing a few of the children shopping with their parents into fully grown adults).

With the help of Lori’s coworker Lisa, she and Sharon had managed to regain possession of the age changer and restore themselves to adult women. Sharon had punished her daughters by changing them into babies for a week - giving them an opportunity to experience first hand the humiliation they had caused their many victims. When their punishment had finally expired, Sharon had marched nine year old Stacey and eleven year old Connie over to Lori’s apartment, where the two sheepish girls dutifully offered their apologies and promised to never take anything that didn’t belong to them again. Lori accepted their apologies, knowing that they were basically good kids. She could hardly blame them for getting a bit carried away; if Lori had been their age and had been tempted by finding a gadget that could change adults into children, she wasn’t sure that she would have behaved much differently.

Over the past few weeks, Sharon hadn’t mentioned the incident again. Lori guessed that Sharon was just trying to put an unpleasant experience behind her. Stacey and Connie seemed very contrite and averted their eyes whenever Lori saw them. They seemed eager to stay out of her way.

Lori’s friend Lisa had reacted to the experience in exactly the opposite manner - not a day went by at work that Lisa didn’t drop by Lori’s office to talk about the age changing device. Lisa was obsessed with speculating on its origin, technology, and effects. Lisa enjoyed constantly recounting the various scenes they had witnessed in the mall, and was continually pestering Lori for an opportunity to see the mysterious device again. Lori knew full well that Lisa probably wanted to try it out on herself, and even though Lisa was one of her best friends, the thought of Lisa regressing herself made Lori a bit uncomfortable. It didn’t take much imagination to understand that if Lisa suddenly showed up at work one day looking fifteen years younger, it would attract a great deal of unwanted attention.

After lots of soul searching and deliberation, Lori had reluctantly agreed to let Lisa “take a look at” the age changing remote control again. Lisa had helped Lori innumerable times, had served as a loyal mentor ever since Lori had started working in the marketing department, and had indisputably proven herself to be a trustworthy friend. Although Lori still harbored a few reservations, she was confident that Lisa was an inherently sensible woman and wouldn’t do anything outrageous. Before leaving for work that morning, Lori had retrieved the device from its hiding place under one of her sofa cushions and stuffed it into her already jam-packed purse.

=====

In the wake of the evening of mayhem at the mall, a frenzied media began referring to the phenomena of “Instantaneous Age Alteration Syndrome”. Skeptical investigators from a variety of academic and governmental institutions had arrived en masse to interview victims and bystanders, but the “experts” collectively remained unable to explain what had happened. The first popular theory was that the age-change incidents were nothing more than manifestations of mass hysteria; this hypothesis was dismissed after overwhelming evidence seemed to conclusively establish that dozens of people had beyond doubt been made physically younger. After a few days of confusion during which local schools and business remained closed out of fear that the unknown cause of the age changing was perhaps some type of contagious agent, life for most people had gradually returned to normal (except, of course, for the hapless individuals who had lost many years of maturity and now faced the prospect of experiencing childhood and/or puberty all over again).

Lori had spent nearly all of her spare time over the past several weeks secretly using the device to rectify the mischief caused by Stacey and Connie. This task was all the more difficult since Lori had to restore the victims back to normal without making it appear that she (or, more specifically, the age changing control she had discovered) was associated with their restoration to original condition. It also required considerable detective work to locate all of those who had been effected, although Lori did have some help in the form of a continuous stream of “first person” and special interest stories in the local newspaper and on television. Examples of newspaper articles included many with headlines such as “Jefferson School PTA Leader Reduced to First Grader”, “Soccer Moms Younger Than Own Children”, and “Victims of Mysterious Age Effect Face Many Adjustments.”

The final challenge Lori faced after locating a victim was to figure out the person’s “real” age. Even when Lori was able to determine this exactly, the control box had no calibration or reference mechanism that she was able to figure out, relegating her valiant attempts at restoring individuals back to their original age to rough approximations at best.

One benefit of her clandestine age casualty restoration activities was that it provided an excellent opportunity to familiarize herself with the operation of the device. Her first unhappy experience with the control had initially made Lori very cautious about performing any experimentation, but as the weeks passed she slowly regained enough confidence to try some of the buttons whose function remained obscure. She learned that, in addition to the age regression and progression functions, the control could optionally adjust the size and proportioning of shoes and clothing worn by a target subject. She also accidentally discovered that several of the buttons could be used to set a time delay effect - an targeted individual would show no immediate change, but would gradually grow older or younger over a period of an hour or so.

Lori still had many unanswered questions regarding the device. The operation of many of the other buttons remained incomprehensible - when pressed, they had no discernable effect on anything. Another mystery regarded the power source - there was nothing resembling a battery compartment (in fact, the unit appeared to be made of solid metal), and yet the device had showed no signs of running low on energy even after extensive use. As she had come to understand, calibration was an issue - although she could make people younger or older, there was no way (other than visual observation combined with educated guessing) to determine their exact physical age. Lori often wished that the control had a numeric keypad. Piecing together what she had been able to learn thus far, Lori had tentatively started to write her own “instruction book” for the age changer based on her amateur testing and experiences.

=====

Lori’s reverie was broken as she was abruptly snapped back to everyday reality by the sound of her cell phone ringing inside her purse. She snatched her purse off the kitchen counter and, as she took her cell phone out, immediately realized that something was missing.

Lori cursed herself under her breath. The age control she had found several weeks ago was gone!

Her blood ran cold as she suddenly remembered exactly where she had left the device - right on the coffee table in the middle of Christine Vanowski’s living room. Lori had wanted to show Chris where some of the text for the new print ad campaign needed to be changed, and had been rather hasty while rummaging through her purse for her yellow highlighter. In the process, Lori had dumped her keys, cell phone, lipstick, and various other items out on the table, and neglected to put the most important - and dangerous - item back into her handbag.

“Shit!” she exclaimed to the empty room.

The last thing in the world that Lori wanted was to attract any attention to the age manipulator. Once the proverbial cat was out of the bag, the rich and powerful of the world would surely want the “fountain of youth” to become their exclusive property, and would stop at nothing to get it. Besides the possibility that the rightful owner might try to claim it, she feared that some government agency would attempt to confiscate the device, no doubt for “national security” reasons. She had to get it back before anyone started playing around with it and discovered what it was capable of doing. Lori winced as she remembered how she had narrowly avoided accidentally changing herself into a baby when she had first found the control, and grimaced again as she recalled what had happened when the control got into the wrong hands.

=====

Andrea Vanowski had celebrated her fifth birthday several months ago, and to her mother’s consternation had reached that challenging stage of development when natural childlike curiosity occasionally outweighed fear of parental punishment.

Shortly after Miss Sheffield had left, Andrea noticed a rectangular silver box sitting atop the table in the family room. She picked it up and was a bit surprised to find out how heavy it was. Andrea studied it for a moment before heading off to the kitchen, where her mother was having coffee with her friend Peggy Schwann from down the block.

Christine turned to face her daughter as Andrea entered the room. She was carrying some small object that Chris hadn’t remembered seeing before. Did Lori accidentally leave something here before she left? The object was metallic and didn’t resemble a cell phone. Whatever Andrea had found, it looked expensive - and possibly fragile.

“No, Andrea! Put that down before you break it!” ordered Christine as she finished pouring her cup of coffee.

“I won’t break it, Mommy,” insisted Andrea. Undeterred by her mother’s admonishment, the five year old continued to study the box she was holding.

Peggy chuckled. “Kids will be kids, Chris,” she laughed, taking a sip of coffee.

“Andrea, for the last time, leave that thing alone. Don’t make me spank you, young lady!” threatened Christine.

“Don’t worry, Mommy. I’ll be careful, I promise,” pledged Andrea. She wondered what the buttons on the box did. They reminded her of the buttons on the box she used to change channels when she was watching television. Experimentally, she pressed one of them.

Without warning, a faint, soft blue light emanated from the narrow end of the object, momentarily engulfing Christine, who was standing at the counter. It lasted for only a split second.

“Eeep!” squealed Andrea, who hadn’t expected anything so dramatic to happen.

“Damn! What the hell was that!?” exclaimed Christine, nearly dropping her coffee in surprise at the blue light.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” whimpered Andrea.

“Wow, that was weird!” agreed Peggy, who had likewise nearly spilled her drink.

“Andrea! What did I tell you? You could have hurt someone with that. Now put it down!” demanded Christine, reacting more out of fear than anything else. It obviously wasn’t a remote control. Maybe it was a high power cell phone. Who knows what kind of voltage that thing was capable of? She felt grateful that whatever kind of battery it contained, at least it hadn’t shocked or injured her daughter.

“But Mommy,” cried Andrea. “I didn’t know it would do that!”

“From now on...” began Christine, adopting her sternest voice of parental authority. She stopped suddenly, realizing that something was very wrong. The kitchen counter on which she rested her elbow was moving - it was gradually escalating, rising upward from the floor as if on a slow elevator!

“What’s going on?” she yelped, stepping back to take a better look at the oddly rising countertop. It was then that she noticed that the peculiar expansion wasn’t limited to the countertop - everything in the kitchen, from the table where her friend Peggy sat to the refrigerator, was slowly moving upwards.

“Chris! Look at yourself!” exclaimed Peggy, a note of worry in her voice. As she watched in disbelief, her friend Christine was starting to slowly loose height, growing shorter inch by inch.

“I can’t believe it! It’s almost as if...like you’re starting to shrink.”

“Oh God! What did that thing do to me?” moaned Christine, a mortified expression on her face, realizing that Peggy was correct - the room wasn’t getting taller, it was her point of view that was gradually but noticeably changing. She was getting smaller!

She soon became aware that her clothes, apparently unaffected by the ray, were slowly expanding relative to her steadily diminishing size. Her pants appeared longer, and now drooped over the tops of her shoes, while her top - a comfortable fit minutes before - now seemed to be growing baggier by the second.

“Mommy - you’re getting shorter!” observed Andrea, her voice a mixture of fear and awe.

Christine tugged at her oversized sweater. She could see the material start to droop in front, and quickly realized that her breasts were dwindling from ample grapefruits back into the much smaller sized, pear-shaped adolescent mammaries she vaguely remembered from her high school days. Chris realized that she wasn’t shrinking, she was getting younger!

“Hey - What the heck is happening?” pleaded Christine. To her surprise, she discovered that her voice was also changing.

“Chris...I think you’re still shrinking...this is incredible...” was the only thing Peggy was able to say to her slowly but steadily youthening friend, who now looked like she was in her early teens. Chris tugged helplessly at her belt, noticing that her increasingly baggy and heavy pants had started to slide down her much narrower - almost girlish - hips. All of her apparel looked several sizes too large.

“Peggy...I’m think that I’m getting younger,” Christine moaned. “Like those people in the mall a few weeks ago...” Disconcertingly, Chris found that she now had to look up to talk to Peggy, who had always been approximately the same height as she was. Peggy was now at least four inches taller!

“You’re shorter than I am,” observed Peggy.

“Even my shoes are getting way too big,” said Christine, noting that she could easily wiggle her toes inside her unexpectedly expanding footwear.

“You’re still getting littler, Mommy,” said Andrea, observing her mother’s steadily dwindling stature.

“This is terrible...no, this can’t be...look at my breasts,” responded her mother, feeling her small teenaged breasts continue to grow even smaller. Her bra had become ridiculously oversized, and the big (but now empty) cups drooped all the way down to her belly button.

“Oh...Chris...this is so weird - you’re really starting to look like a kid,” gasped Peggy, still in a state of shock as she watched her friend’s metamorphosis back into childhood. By now, Christine looked like she was a middle school girl. The woman-sized clothing that was a comfortable fit less than a minute ago was practically swallowing her up.

“No...no, I don’t like this...,” groaned Christine, looking very distraught as she fumbled in her oversized outfit. She placed her smaller hands against the front of her chest, and discovered that it was now completely flat.

Finally, the youthening stopped. Christine had become a little girl, and found that for the first time she could stand at the same height and look eye to eye with her five year old daughter. They were almost the same size, and even had similar features, even though Christine’s hair was still darker than her daughter’s. The main characteristic that distinguished mother from daughter was the fact that Andrea was wearing appropriately sized girl’s clothing, while Christine stood in a pile of garments that made her look like she had been playing dress up.

There was a moment of stunned silence as Peggy and Andrea stood gaping at what had become of Christine, while Christine simultaneously regarded her daughter and her friend Peggy from a completely new - and much shorter - perspective.

“Oh my god...I can’t believe this. Andrea, look at what that thing did to me,” complained Christine, wincing at her very high-pitched voice.

“Mommy, look! You’re my size now!” squealed Andrea, a smile of pure delight on her face. When she had disobeyed her mother, she had been afraid at first that the remote control thing had hurt her. She was also afraid that her mother was going to give her a scolding. This was the best of both worlds - fortunately, her mother wasn’t really hurt by the remote control at all. Not only that, but her mom was now too small to deal out any punishment!

“This is awful...just look at these things...they don’t fit me anymore,” said Christine, holding her arms out to her side. She had been wearing a black sweater, which now draped down her body and seemed to have grown as large and heavy as a tent. The arms now hung down past her hands, and her collar was so wide that her shoulders (and a large expanse of her completely flat chest) were exposed through the neck opening. Fortunately, this impromptu “dress” maintained a bit of her modesty, since her slacks (and panties) had fallen in a pile around her ankles. Somewhere underneath the heap of clothing, her girl-sized feet were still standing inside her adult-sized shoes, except that her shoes now seemed comically large - almost like clown shoes.

“You look funny, Mommy - your clothes are way too big,” sniggered Andrea as she watched her reduced mother fidgeting with her outsized garments. “You’ll have to borrow mine!”

“Young lady, this is no laughing matter!” scolded Christine. Her threat sounded silly even to herself, coming as it did in the piping soprano voice of a little girl.

“Chris, this is amazing,” said Peggy, who now literally towered over both Christine and Andrea. She wouldn’t have believed what had happened if she hadn’t witnessed it - her friend Christine, a chubby 34 year old housewife, had in less than a minute been reduced to the same age as her five year old daughter...apparently due to some sort of weird ray that came from a small metal box no larger than a remote control!

Peggy couldn’t resist her sudden maternal impulse to pat the now diminutive Christine on the top of her little head. Her former plus-sized adult friend looked so cute as a child!

Christine now only stood as high as Peggy’s waist, and had to crane her neck to look her onetime equal in the eye. “Peggy, don’t do that!”

“Sorry, Chris - it’s just that you’re so small, I couldn’t resist,” observed Peggy, looking down at her little friend. “You look so sweet as a kid.”

“I sure hope that thing can change me back,” said Christine, with a hint of concern in her voice. She briefly contemplated some of the likely consequences if it turned out her newly resized body was a permanent change, and shuddered involuntarily.

“Mommy is my size now!” called Andrea for the second time, giggling hysterically as she pointed at the little girl dressed in adult clothes standing in front of her.

“But not for long, I hope.” Christine awkwardly looked her five year old daughter, who was now only a bit smaller than she was. Andrea seemed so big! With their relative statures nearly equal, there was no way Christine could even think of picking Andrea up - or giving her a swat on the behind for misbehavior.

“What are you going to do?” asked Peggy, looking down at Chris.

“Andrea, hand Mommy that box,” Christine ordered, looking at her older daughter as sternly as a five year old could. Christine desperately hoped that the mysterious device that had reduced her mature body into that of a five year old child could also restore her back to womanhood.

Andrea was holding the remote control in one hand, but looked lost in thought for a moment and failed to answer her mother.

“Andrea, I said give me the box. Right now.”

Andrea looked at her mother blankly, but still didn’t respond. She was obviously thinking.

“Andrea, if you don’t hand me that thing right now, I’m going to give you a spanking you won’t forget.” Christine realized how ridiculous her threat sounded, coming as it did in her little girl voice. It was even less convincing since neither her nor her husband had ever resorted to spanking either of their children.

“Mommy, if you get bigger again, I don’t want you to spank me,” pouted Andrea.

“Andrea, please give your mother that box,” said Peggy. “I’m sure she won’t spank you.”

Instead of handing her diminutive mother the control, Andrea smiled mischievously and pointed the device directly at Christine. She pressed the same button she had before.

“Andrea! What are you doing?” yelled Christine in a sudden panic as a barely visible ray of blue light momentarily engulfed her for the second time. Andrea smiled silently and seemed to grow taller while Christine watched in dismay. She could feel her huge sweater growing even bigger and looser. Everything in the room was getting larger and larger, as Christine realized that she was becoming even younger.

“Young wady, you are in tho much twouble,” shouted Christine to the best of her ability. Her scolding came out in a babyish lisp.

In a moment, Christine had to look up at five year old Andrea. She nearly panicked as she continued to get even shorter. Feeling a bit dizzy, she discovered that she now was having a hard time maintaining her balance. Her arms and legs were growing short and pudgy, and were becoming weaker by the second. Unable to stay on her feet any longer, Christine stumbled to her knees, her fall cushioned considerably by the pile of clothing that she had been wearing. She tried to rise and found that she could no longer stand up. She was an infant!

“No no no!” she wailed. “Pweggy!”

The kitchen was a huge place now. Her own daughter towered over her, and Peggy was virtually a giant. Andrea was giggling uncontrollably. Peggy stood off to one side as though in partial shock, her mouth hanging open as she looked down on the baby girl that had been a woman her own age just minutes before.

“Mommy, you’re really a little baby now!” laughed Andrea.

“Pwease, make me big again,” mewled Christine helplessly. It was hard for her to form words. Her mouth felt small and strange, and she realized that her teeth had receded back into her gums. She started crawling out from under her big baggy sweater, discovering that both of her shoulders now easily squeezed through the neck opening.

From her newly reduced viewpoint, Christine saw that Andrea still held the control box and that she was stepping toward Peggy.

“Miss Schwann, I can make you little again too,” chuckled Andrea.

“No, Andrea,” said Peggy. “Please don’t point that thing at me!” Peggy started easing away from the youngster, but found that she was backing herself into a corner of the kitchen with no doorway.

Andrea grinned. For a five year old, the feeling of power was too great to resist. She aimed the box while pressing down the same button yet another time, and the barely visible blue beam of light momentarily bathed Peggy.

“Andrea, please, no...I don’t want to be a child - no, my god, I feel weird,” groaned Peggy, holding her hand to her head.

“Pweggy,” lisped Christine, trying without success to carefully articulate every word. “You’re getting widdle too.”

“Oh, no, not me too...” gasped Peggy, nearly panicking, recognizing the truth in her friend’s observation. She noticed that her clothing had already started to loosen.

Christine hoped that her friend would have the presence of mind to try to grab the box out of Andrea’s grasp while she still had a size advantage and was big enough to do so. Unfortunately, Peggy seemed to be frozen with terror as she stood helplessly and watched her adult body rapidly regress toward girlhood.

“No, this can’t be - no, not my figure,” groaned Peggy, watching her breasts steadily shrinking. Now she knew how Chris must have felt when she watched her ample bosom melt away. Peggy had always been envious of Christine’s full figure, since Peggy had never been blessed with anything more substantial than a B Cup. Peggy realized that in a few moments she, like her hapless friend, would be so young that she would no longer need to worry about wearing a bra of any size.

Andrea seemed to grow larger as Peggy youthened rapidly through her teen years and girlhood. In a few moments, her chest had become completely flat, and her arms and legs became skinny and girlish looking. She continued to get smaller, growing shorter while her loosened clothing sagged over her dwindling frame. In another few seconds, Andrea was taller than she was. Just as Christine had done moments before, Peggy lost her balance and fell on her rump, finding that she had gotten tangled up in her own outfit. Her tank top had acquired tent-like proportions, and she had to struggle to crawl free of her bra straps so she could poke her head out of the pile of clothing.

Peggy discovered that she was once again the same age as her friend Christine, the only difference being that they were now both reduced to six month old infants.

“Cwiss, you wook funny,” Peggy managed to say, momentarily surprised that her voice was no longer a womanly contralto.

“You don’t wook tho good youthelf,” replied Christine.

“What are we going to do?” asked Peggy. “We can-th th-stay wike thith!”

Andrea continued laughing, watching as the two baby girls crawled out from under the heaps of clothing they had been wearing only a few minutes earlier.

“C’mon, I know where I can put you two,” said Andrea to her little charges.

“Put me down!” demanded Christine, struggling ineffectively as her five year old daughter easily picked her up and carried her toward the spare bedroom upstairs.

“Mommy, if you and Peggy are both good little babies, I promise I’ll try to make you big again later,” said Andrea as she carefully lifted her mother up and over into her cousin Stacey’s playpen, which had been set up last weekend in the spare bedroom when her mother had been babysitting for her aunt.

Christine marveled at how large her baby niece’s playpen seemed to her in her “new” size. Reduced to infancy, there was no way she was tall or strong enough to climb out.

A moment later, Andrea returned from the kitchen carrying a naked and crying baby Peggy, whom she set down gently in the playpen next to Christine.

“You two look so pretty,” gushed Andrea as she looked at the two undressed infants.

The doorbell rang.

“Andrea, change me back wight now!” shrieked Christine. “I have to anther the door!”

“You can’t - you’re way too little now,” tittered Andrea. “Don’t worry, Mommy, I’ll see who it is.”

Andrea dashed down the steps, leaving Peggy and Christine alone.

“Well...what now?” lisped Peggy, glaring at Christine.

“We can’t get out of here - ith too high,” observed Christine, studying the confines of the playpen. To the two baby-sized inmates, it made an effective jail.

=====

The doorbell rang a second time. Andrea, totally disregarding her mother’s long standing safety instructions regarding answering the door, went to see who it was.

Trapped in the playpen upstairs, Christine realized that it was Heather, the teenaged daughter of her next door neighbor, right on time as usual. Yesterday, Christine had arranged for Heather Mathews, who was a junior in high school, to stop by immediately after lunch and escort Andrea over to the Jefferson Elementary School for her usual afternoon kindergarten class, ensuring that Christine and Peggy could get a head start on a leisurely afternoon of shopping at the mall. Of course, due to the unforeseen circumstances, neither Christine or Peggy were in any condition to go shopping for quite a while - at least by themselves, without being pushed in a baby stroller.

“Hi, Andrea!” greeted Heather. “Is your mom around?”

“Uh - Hi, Heather,” replied Andrea, obviously caught be surprise. She hadn’t prepared an excuse for what had happened to her mother. “Mommy - uh - she said you’d be coming after lunch. She just left -um- a few minutes ago.”

“Your mom just left?” asked Heather, puzzled. Mrs. Vanowski sure didn’t seem like the type of person to leave a five year old home alone. Then again, she had asked Heather to come by right after lunch, and if she were in a hurry...well, maybe it was something important. After all, Mrs. Vanowski did know that her neighbors were home in case some emergency came up, and apparently she was only going to be away for a few minutes.

“Andrea, did your mom say how long she was going to be gone?” asked Heather.

“Umm...she said she’d back by...well, uh...right after she checked next door with Mrs. Smith,” lied Andrea, referring to her other next door neighbor. “She said for us to close the door behind us and just go ahead.”

“Well...I suppose it’s alright,” agreed Heather, albeit somewhat reluctantly. “Are you all ready?”

“Yep,” beamed Andrea, who had surreptitiously stashed the seemingly magical age control box into her backpack. “Let’s go.”

The Jefferson Elementary School was only two blocks away. Andrea was lost in happy thoughts as she considered the possibilities of changing some of the teachers and other adults at her school into children her own age - or, in some cases, making them even younger, so that they would have to do what she told them to, instead of the other way around. It would serve them right to find out what it was like to be little again, she thought. Andrea self-righteously justified to herself that turning the tables on most of the grown-ups she knew would only be fair.

While Heather had her back turned for a moment, Andrea aimed the control at her and pressed the button briefly. She saw her babysitter quickly become slightly shorter and smaller. Heather had been reduced in age just enough to make her clothing fit rather sloppily, but was not youthened enough that she could immediately determine that she was smaller. No longer a high school junior, Heather was now barely old enough to pass as a freshman, although she didn’t realize it just yet.

“What’s with these clothes?” complained Heather, tugging at her waist. Her jeans seemed to keep slipping down off her hips, even though she had already tightened her belt twice. Andrea giggled to herself and slipped the control into her backpack again.

Andrea and Heather finally reached the school. “Well, here you are,” said Heather, wistfully looking at the building where she had attended grammar school not so many years ago. “I kind of wish I could go in with you, Andrea.”

“Well - why don’t you?” asked Andrea innocently.

“Kindergarten is fun for kids your age,” explained Heather, “but I’m too big for it now.”

“Too old?” asked Andrea. “What if...ummm...what if there was someway you could be little again? Would you come in with me?”

“What an imagination,” chuckled Heather, her eyeballs rolling. She continued to reminisce as she studied the familiar fa?ade of her old school. She didn’t notice her young companion digging into her backpack and producing a slim, rectangular metal object that she aimed in Heather’s direction.

“Darn it! These clothes are so baggy!” complained Heather, realizing that her pants had become very droopy and loose. And her stretchy top wasn’t fitting right either - it no longer flattered her figure, which seemed to be - smaller? Her bra seemed too roomy. She had just purchased most of what she was wearing no more than a week or two ago, and everything had seemed to fit fine then. What was going on?

Heather turned to look at Andrea. Andrea seemed taller than she remembered - much taller, in fact. “How’d you get so tall?” demanded Heather, surprised to find that her voice sounded rather high pitched.

She watched in disbelief as Andrea smiled and pushed a button on a small box she was holding and pointing in her general direction. Heather grew even shorter and smaller as she youthened further, until in a moment the unfortunate teen found herself standing at the same height as five year old Andrea.

“Hey - what did you do to me?” squealed Heather, still confused by her own strange sounding voice.

“Now you’re my size,” smiled Andrea. “You can come to kindergarten with me.”

The unexpectedly pint-sized Heather looked worried and confused rather than happy. She looked at Andrea, and then down at herself. Heather’s teenaged attributes were gone - her developing breasts and hips had disappeared, causing her newly spacious bra and panties to inexorably slide southward down her diminished body. She started tugging at her ill-fitting clothing, which had been rendered many sizes too large. Mesmerized, she started muttering to herself while staring down in astonishment and disbelief at her downsized body.

“This isn’t possible...I can’t be a little kid again...”

At that moment, the school bell rang. Andrea hurried up the steps.

“Last chance, Heather,” she called to her former babysitter as she opened up the door. “C’mon!”

“No...this can’t be happening. I’ve got to go home and get some help...” whimpered Heather, who turned away and started to hurry back toward her house. Andrea could barely help sniggering as she watched the thoroughly confused former teen try to sprint, struggling to hold on to her vastly oversized attire as best she could while scampering down the street to her home.

As a disheveled-looking Heather Mathews disappeared around the corner, Andrea entered the school door and dashed toward her classroom. She frowned for a moment when she realized that the weekly “Show And Tell” day wasn’t until tomorrow. Andrea often bemoaned the fact that it wasn’t very often that anyone in her class had something really interesting to show, and the age-changing control would certainly qualify as one of the best items of all time - especially if Andrea gave some live demonstrations of how it worked.

Even if “Show And Tell” wasn’t officially scheduled until the next day, Andrea knew she could have plenty of fun showing off the weird control to her friends and letting them see how it worked.

=====

Kaitlin was one of Andrea’s closest friends, so it was only natural that Andrea was quite anxious to show off the age changing control to her schoolmate.

“...so then I changed my mom and her friend Peggy all the way back into little babies,” concluded Andrea breathlessly as she finished describing the events of the morning to Kaitlin.

“Did you try it on anyone else yet?” queried Kaitlin, who was quite enthralled with Andrea’s story, even though she was old enough to realize that her friend Andrea was probably exaggerating the facts by a considerable margin. Outside of a few television cartoons, Kaitlin had never heard of anything that could change grownups into kids again.

“I used it on my babysitter Heather right in front of the school here - I didn’t change her into a baby, but I still made her a lot littler,” continued Heather. “She’s our size now. She didn’t seem to like it much...she ran away. I think she went back home.”

“Andrea, are you sure you aren’t just making all this up?” asked Kaitlin in a politely skeptical way.

“No...here it is,” said Andrea, producing the small, thin metal box from her backpack and handing it to Kaitlin.

Kaitlin squinted as she studied the device. “That doesn’t look like anything great to me. It looks like it’s for a TV,” she pronounced, still unconvinced.

“No, watch,” whispered Andrea, taking the control out of Kaitlin’s hands. “I’ll use it on somebody to turn them into a baby, then you’ll believe me.”

“Yeah, sure, like it’s really going to change someone into a baby. Who are going to use it on?” asked Kaitlin.

“I dunno,” said Andrea, momentarily at a loss for ideas. The other kids in class might be fun...but, after all, they were already just kids. The best demonstration - and most entertaining result - would be to reduce an older person to childhood.

“How about Miss Aspen?” suggested Kaitlin, referring to their teacher, who had momentarily stepped out of the classroom into the hallway.

“But I like Miss Aspen,” objected Andrea. “Maybe she wouldn’t like being a baby again.” She recalled how upset her mom and Miss Schwann had been when she shrunk them down into infants.

“You don’t have to make her into a baby. How ?bout you just change her to our age? Then she’d be old enough to play with us,” said Kaitlin. “As if that thing really works anyway.”

“You’ll see. When Miss Aspen gets here, I’ll make her five years old. That should prove that it works.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” asserted Kaitlin, extremely dubious of Andrea’s seemingly wild claims.

Maureen Aspen entered the room with a smile on her face. Maureen loved teaching. She had been acting as a substitute since she had graduated college with her degree in Elementary Education two years before, and thanks to a lucky break had just been awarded her first full time permanent assignment in the Jefferson School kindergarten at the beginning of the school year.

“I think it’s this button here,” whispered Andrea to Kaitlin while she pointed the device in the direction of Miss Aspen. Kaitlin observed carefully. She thought she heard an almost inaudible, high-pitched tone emanate from the apparatus as Andrea’s finger pressed down on one of the shiny round switch contacts. A very faint blue light could be seen coming from the front of object.

“Well, hello class. After I take attendance, we’re going to learn a new game. Won’t that be fun?” Maureen began to quickly check off children’s names from the list in her notebook, unaware that Andrea Vanowski was pointing what looked like a remote control in her direction.

Andrea kept the device aimed directly at Miss Aspen and continued to zap her with a low dosage of youthening radiation. Oblivious to Andrea’s activity, Miss Aspen began to describe the rules for a game that involved learning the letters of the alphabet.

For about thirty seconds, Kaitlin and Andrea riveted their attention on Miss Aspen to see if they could notice any changes in her appearance. For what seemed like an eternity, nothing happened. Suddenly, the children the class began to gasp and stare in astonishment as they realized that Miss Aspen was shrinking.

Maureen paused as she saw the increasingly wide eyed expressions on the faces of her students.

“What’s everybody looking at?” she asked, puzzled. She noticed that the familiar classroom looked subtly different...almost as if it were a bit bigger.

“Miss Aspen, you’re shrinking!” shouted Erin, one of Andrea’s classmates who happened to be standing close to her teacher.

“Huh?” asked Maureen. It was then that she realized that something was wrong with her clothing. It was very baggy, and she could feel her top and pants shifting position as they slid a bit lower on her body. Her shoes were too big for her feet.

“Lookit! She’s still shrinking!” yelped one of the boys in the class.

“Hey! I am getting smaller!” Maureen exclaimed in surprise, noting that her voice sounded different.

“Look at her!”

The children began giggling as Miss Aspen continued to grow shorter and shorter. Her face looked younger and younger while her clothes sagged over her diminishing frame.

“Oh...my...what’s going on?” she gasped, looking down at herself in disbelief. Beneath the material of her top, which no longer showed any projection where she would normally expect to see her breasts, Maureen could feel her empty bra cups sliding down the front of her chest, which was now flat and smooth.

Tara and Melody, two girls who were friends with Andrea and Kaitlin, approached the front of the class to get a better look at their teacher, who continued dwindling right in front of their eyes.

“You’re getting younger!” exclaimed Tara.

“You’ll be in kindergarten with us,” said Melody, her mouth open in amazement.

In another few seconds, Maureen was roughly the same height - and same age - as her kindergarten students.

“This...can’t be...,” gasped the diminutive teacher, experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance as she grappled with the strange concept that she had somehow been reduced to the stature of a five year old.

The children crowded around Maureen, unable to believe what they were seeing.

“Now class, I’m sure there’s some logical explanation for...umm...what happened to me,” said the overdressed five year old.

“Look, I’m taller than you are now,” said Tara, standing next to Maureen. It was true - Maureen Aspen was shorter than Tara and several other of the girls in the class.

Melody tugged on one of Maureen’s dangling shirt sleeves to show how long it was. “Look at your clothes...they’re too big for you,” she laughed.

Maureen pulled her shirt sleeve away from Melody. “Class, I expect you all to behave yourselves,” warned Maureen. Since she now looked and sounded just like another kindergarten student, her authority was essentially gone.

The children in the kindergarten continued laughing as they watched their former teacher struggle to restore order to the classroom. Maureen was hampered by the fact that, although now only five years old, she was still wearing an outfit intended to be worn by a size 12 woman.

Just then, Paige Ranford, a teacher just a few years older than Maureen who had helped her out on numerous occasions, entered the classroom. Paige had helped to mentor Maureen when she had started teaching at Jefferson Elementary, and the two women had become close friends. Paige looked around the room in puzzlement, trying to find Maureen. Surely Maureen wouldn’t have left the class unattended without some good reason.

“Where did Miss Aspen go?” Paige asked the class. Several of the children started to laugh and pointed at the five year old Maureen, who stood near the front of room, still struggling unhappily with her oversized outfit and sobbing in frustration at her strange transformation back to childhood.

“Paige, it’s me!” she squeaked as she gazed up into her friend’s face, a few tears running down her cheeks.

Paige studied the little girl for a minute. At first, she thought that it was one of the kindergarteners playing a dress-up game - but as she took a closer look, she could see that the child was wearing a woman’s bra underneath her super-sized blouse, and was standing in a pair of woman’s dress flats. Her attire seemed a bit too realistic for a game...and it dawned on Paige that she had seen Maureen wearing exactly the same outfit that this little girl was wearing when she had arrived at work that morning. The only difference was that it had fit Maureen snuggly early that day.

“Maureen? Is that you?” she asked.

“Paige, help me, please, something changed me into a kid again,” pleaded Maureen, tugging at her friend’s skirt. Maureen was normally the tall one, but now Paige towered over her like a virtual giant.

=====

Heather ran breathlessly nearly all the way back to her house, stumbling several times in her awkwardly oversized clothes. She finally had to slow down to avoid accidentally losing her giant sized shoes, which flopped and threatened to go flying off her small feet with every step she took. After a seemingly endless marathon, she finally arrived home and raced inside.

“Darcie!” yelped Heather, nearly running into her younger sister as she dashed through the front door. She immediately discovered that Darcie was no longer her “little” sister. From her new perspective, Darcie - who was only in the seventh grade at middle school - looked huge.

Darcie looked down at the oddly familiar little girl dressed in clothes several sizes too big for her. The baggy clothes looked a bit familiar too...Darcie was nearly certain that they belonged to her older sister. And the girl’s hair - it was styled just like Heather’s was. “Heather?” she asked hesitantly, not believing her own eyes. “Is that you?”

“Darcie, look - something happened to me!” exclaimed Heather, looking wide-eyed at her “little” sister. “I’m all shrunk!”

“Well...I guess...uh...” said Darcie, not sure what to say. For once, she was speechless. She wasn’t used to looking down to talk to Heather, who was...or at least used to be...four years her elder.

“Darcie, please, you’ve got to help me!” wailed Heather, looking up at her (formerly) younger sister, who was now at least a foot taller than she was.

“Oh my god!” gasped Darcie as she accepted the impossible, staring at her shrunken sibling. “Heather, I can’t believe that it’s you. You...you look like you’re just a little kid! What in the world happened to you?”

“Darcie, Andrea Vanowski did this to me!” wailed Heather. “She shrunk me! Look at me, I’m like a rug rat again!”

“Andrea? The kid who lives next door? How could she make you younger?”

“She has this weird box...it looks like a remote control or something...and when she points it at someone and presses one of the buttons, it makes them younger,” sobbed Heather. “Look! Look at what it did to me!”

“Wow...you look like you’re only five or six years old,” agreed Darcie.

“I know,” sobbed Heather. “Darcie, it’s not fair! I can’t stay like this. You’ve got to help me get that box from her. There must be a way of using it in reverse.”

Heather despaired as she realized that she was now only as tall as twelve year old Darcie’s chest. Eye level with the two small bumps pushing out from her sister’s shirt, Heather realized that Darcie’s budding breasts were now considerably more mature and developed than her own essentially flat chest. Heather and Darcie’s relative physical status had been inverted. Heather felt a pang of guilt as she remembered the many times she had made fun of Darcie since her younger sister had entered puberty; at the moment, their status was reversed.

Darcie looked down at Heather and smiled. This is going to be an interesting situation, she thought, considering the practical everyday implications of her older sibling now being many years her junior. Heather was not only much younger than her own friends and high school classmates, she was now even younger than Darcie and her junior high school social circle.

 

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