Promotion or Pacifier

Chapter 2
Chapter 2

Kyle stirred as the first light grayed the slats of his venetian blinds. After feeling light-headed and disoriented the day before, he had consulted his electronic wristband for clues, only to be told that his health vitals were improving by the hour. Baffled, he had gone to bed early, and made a mental footnote to ship the device back to the manufacturer for recalibration.

Pulling a blanket over his head, Kyle tried to get a few more winks of sleep, but was interrupted by the lilting chirps of his mobile phone. He stretched out his arm to snooze the alarm, but found that he couldn"€™t reach. He tried again, and managed to grasp the edge of the device, but his cloth-encumbered hands fumbled and knocked it off the table.

Cursing, he sat up, and was shocked to discover that his arms had dwindled and retreated up the long sleeves of his pajamas, leaving the ends hanging loose like limp socks. He leapt out of bed, but trod on the insides of his pant legs, tripping and crashing onto the floor.

Struggling out of his pajamas and to his feet, he dashed into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. An awkward and gangly middle-schooler stared back at him, little more than an acned string bean teetering on the edge of puberty. All traces of muscle tone were gone, and so too was his cherished beard, which had retreated to its last vestiges above his lips. The rest of his body hair had also withdrawn into his skin, taking away the cover of his pale, scrawny limbs and pink, knobby knees.

He stood, dumbfounded, as his mind careened about, as if set loose in a penny arcade with lots of bells ringing and lights flashing. Then he shut his eyes, took a series of slow breaths, and used his meditation training to calm and disperse his inner storm.

Opening his eyes, he turned and walked back into his bedroom, picking up the phone from the floor, and firing up his wristband"€™s companion app. Scrolling thru the data, he noted that his vitals had started shifting around 10am yesterday. What had he been doing at that time? He scanned his calendar for a moment and then remembered "€“ Gary! And that app of his"€¦

Switching to his company"€™s internal collaboration app, he tried sending Gary a direct message, but the man was offline. That was odd "€“ it meant his phone was switched off, which was unlikely for this time of day. Annoyed, he sent a broadcast message to his team"€™s chat channel to ask if anyone had seen or heard from Gary.

"€œNope. Have you checked your email?"€ one of his colleagues texted back.

Kyle sighed. Gary was about the only person on his team who still insisted on using email. He flipped to his mailbox, and right at the top of the pile was a curt message from Gary, saying that he wasn"€™t feeling well and will be working from home today.

Darn. He tried dialing Gary"€™s home number, but there was no response. That left only one option "€“ to visit Gary in person, but he couldn"€™t go out looking like a boy playing dress-up in his daddy"€™s clothes.

Kyle mused for a moment, and smiled when the solution came to him. Thank goodness for one-hour delivery, he thought as he logged into his Prime account and picked out a sleek V-Neck tee with matching jeans and a pair of sneakers. Then he made himself some eggs and toast and did a quick search on the internet, hoping to find out more about his condition. But there were just pages and pages of dubious anti-aging products, interspersed with short fictional stories about people being turned into children. He wondered who would ever want to read any of those.

When his clothes arrived, Kyle changed, slipped his laptop into a backpack, and used his phone to hail a ride to Gary"€™s place. The driver gave him a queer look, but Kyle seemed bored and nonchalant like other teens his age, playing with his phone and responding in mono-syllables. In any case, she had no reason to turn down a paying fare, especially on an account that was flagged as a frequent VIP user.

Gary lived in an old, run-down California ranch house across an overgrown field. Kyle walked up a long curving dirt driveway to the front door and pushed the doorbell. He waited, but there was no response. Was this the right address? He doubled-checked his phone, and pressed the buzzer a second time.

Footsteps approached, and the door cracked open. A boy about his age stood in the entrance. He looked gaunt and nervous as a ship"€™s rat in a trap, veined ears trembling, and had draped himself in a puffy white bathrobe that dragged on the floor behind him like a wedding gown.

"€œGary? Is that you?"€ Kyle asked, flinching at his cracking voice.

"€œKyle?"€

They stared at each other in a stunned silence, before Gary motioned him to come in inside.

Kyle could sense the palpable fear and terror emanating from his colleague. The boy was shaking from head to toe and muttering in an incoherent and disjointed manner.

"€œ"€¦that stupid meditation app turned me into a brat! Trapped me for 2 hours "€˜til the damn battery ran out, thank god. Look, look at me! 30 years gone like that! And it"€™s not over, I"€™m still getting smaller!"€

Alarm bells went off in Kyle"€™s head. He noticed that his jeans, which had been skin-tight when he pulled them on earlier, were already sagging down his waist. Doing a quick mental calculation, he estimated that if he continued shrinking at this rate, he"€™ll be in diapers by tomorrow. But Gary, who had gotten a heavier dose, seemed to be on an accelerated slide into prepubescence.

"€œWhere did you get that app from?"€ Kyle asked.

"€œI clicked on an ad somewhere and"€¦"€

Kyle winced.

"€œDude, just give me your phone."€ Kyle said as he flipped open his laptop and connected Gary"€™s device to a side port. With a few keystrokes, he copied the meditation app into his machine and decompiled it back into its source. Scanning thru the neon bright lines of green code sliding up his screen, he swiftly figured out the gist of how the program worked.

"€œI think I can re-code this app so it will reverse the changes it"€™s made to us."€

"€œReally?"€ Gary said with disbelief. "€œAre you that good?"€

"€œI"€™ve been coding since I was eight, my man."€ Kyle wrapped his arm around Gary"€™s shoulder and gave him a winning smile. "€œTrust me."€

Rummaging for his laptop power cord, Kyle brushed against a stack of magazines, sending them cascading to the floor. As he bent down to retrieve them, he noticed mildewed stains all over the carpet, and lacy borders of dust gathered on the furniture, shelves and windowsills. A pair of oriental vases stood on the dining table, filled with desiccated flowers that had shed a ring of black sediment onto the tablecloth. In a corner, hemmed in by a wall of obsolete programming manuals, was a faded high chair adorned with yellow-helmeted manga frogs, but there was no sign of childhood detritus anywhere else.

Kyle felt a growing sense of concern for Gary. As much as the prospect of being demoted to diapers freaked him out, he was confident he could handle the worst. But he could sense that Gary"€™s problems ran far deeper, and should he fail, the trauma of being reduced to a crawling, thumb-sucking toddler would likely push the man over the edge. He stole a sidelong glance at Gary, who had started hyperventilating and seemed to be coming apart like a cheap watch.

Doubly motivated to succeed, Kyle hauled himself up onto a barstool, cleared a space on the countertop and dove in, hunched in front of the milky glow of his computer screen, surrounded by a shantytown of Gary"€™s old newspapers and fast-food cartons.