THE REVERSION - PART I (Chapter 8)

THE REVERSION INDEX 

The Reversion

by Planet

Chapter 8

Text version:

Chapter 8

December 24 – 11:21 pm.

I’ve written down today’s events for future history. They’re already set on proper scientific records, so I suppose the personal diary of one of its participants is of no real relevance, but here it is.

We arrived to the campus very early in the morning, and we were conducted to the facility that houses the radiation machine. It features a large crystal chamber that isolates the patient who’s being radiated, and the energy comes from a rather large replica of the devices we found in the sky. They weren’t able to make them as small as the originals.

At first, I assumed my role as one of the head researchers, but when everything was almost ready, I had to be constantly reminded that I was also a tester. It was around that time that my 10 years old counterpart also arrived. She was an adorable girl named Juliet Mullan, and thought nervous, she was reasonably calm.

She was up first. I personally injected her the serum and she hardly flinched. She was clearly the perfect choice. Once the liquid was in her bloodstream, we had to rush, for she had to be radiated before a minute passed. She was closed inside the chamber and the device was activated. It sounded like an exploding bomb and she was engulfed by blinding blue lights. Then it was over and now we just had to wait.

We knew that the original Reversion could take up to ten minutes to affect some people, so we reckoned it would be the same with this. It took her four and a half minutes.

I think I was the first one to notice something, or at least the most emotional one, for I squealed excitedly when I saw her body was lengthening a little. Not long after, she started to develop her womanly curves and quickly approached adulthood. Juliet had originally been a 54 years old woman, but being a replica of The Reversion, we knew our procedure would not age her past 25. Indeed, she stopped there, now a perky young woman.

We opened the chamber and let her out. She was very excited, for not only was she back to a more desirable age, but she told us she was much more attractive this time than when she had originally been 25. Another expected side effect of using The Reversion energy.

We monitored Juliet. She was in a perfectly healthy condition, and had become a fully functional adult again. Four hours later, they were ready for me.

I was conducted inside the chamber by a fetching redhead intern from the university, and a colleague of mine injected me. Then they radiated me.

Last time, I had been the first in the family to be affected, starting to change just about 30 seconds after it hit. This time it took me a little longer. Just a bit under two minutes before I could notice it. It was about 20 seconds later that something actually visible happened. I was getting a tad shorter, and I could feel my breasts getting smaller. I was becoming a child again. The experiment was working!

I had originally been 11, and I knew this would make me 10, but it was close enough so that I didn’t really care. It had been a fun ride, being an independent adult, but this would help the world get back to the way it was. While I transformed, I thought how much I would miss being fully grown. Jane would take care of me until she and our parents could get their own cures.

But while I thought all that, something happened. It felt as if my regression stopped, and it was far from its goal.

From what I could see in the highly reflective walls of the chamber, I thought I was about 14, maybe 13, but certainly not 10.

And that wasn’t all. A minute later, I could feel my chest tightening as my breasts grew again. This time it happened much quicker. My legs lengthened so fast I actually felt vertigo. And I was back to 25.

I could see the disappointed looks on my colleagues’ faces. I stepped out of the machine, feeling a little dizzy, just like after my first transformation.

Nobody was saying a word. We were all too frustrated. The silence was only broken by Juliet’s scream, who said her hips had suddenly become smaller. So that was it. It didn’t work permanently on children either. The effects just lasted a little longer in them.

In minutes, she looked like a teenager. We checked the exact time. She was back to her 10 years old body five hours, twelve minutes after her transformation into an adult.

Despite our low disposition, we had to go back to the Research Center at Washington almost immediately, because we needed to report the results to President Hopkins and the others.

I wanted to relieve some stress, so I personally drove my mustang from our private hangar in the airport to the Center. I’ve discovered driving relaxes me.

Once I arrived, I barely had time to take a bath and prepare myself before the President arrived. The reunion was short and direct. The failure had hit us hard. The research will continue of course, but I don’t think we’ll find much more.

The team made a final report, were we admitted our inability to finding out how the changes were caused, and who was responsible. In the final paragraphs, we established our belief that the best possible action humankind can take is to accept our fates and try to adapt. It seems this will be our new reality from now on, and there’s no way of changing it. That realization, as hard as it was, actually made me feel positive about the whole thing.

Still, surprises were not over for the day. When the reunion was over, the President said he wanted to talk privately with me. He was nervous, unlike I’d ever seen him, and though his stammers didn’t make a lot of sense, I understood he wanted me to have dinner with him the day after Christmas.

I’m not sure why, because I’ve turned everybody else down, but I’ve grown to respect him a lot. So I accepted. I intend to take things slowly, anyway.

Someone is ringing at the front door. I’m not expecting visitors, so I don’t have any clue of who can be, specially so late at night.

December 25 – 1:33 pm.

It was Malcolm. He was very apologetic at coming so late, but he was so full of excitement he couldn’t wait. He took something from his pocket. It was an engagement ring.

He had bought it earlier and wanted to show it to me. He intends to propose to Jane tomorrow during the Christmas dinner, and he wants me to be there. He is very thankful for my part in Jane’s divorce, but I only pushed her a little, to be frank. She’s an adult woman now, and she has to make her own decisions, even if I strongly think they were the right ones. And I’m pretty sure her next decision will be to accept Malcom’s proposal. I gave him my blessing.

So, it has been over five months since The Reversion hit and transformed all our lives for ever. I think it’s time for all of us to embrace whatever changes happened to us and try to make our new lives even better than the old ones. I think it’s important to look back at the past and who we were, but I think our minds should be set on who we are in the present and who we want to be in the future. And today, more than ever, I’m glad I’ve become a strong adult woman.

That said, maybe it’s time for me to end this diary. I know I’ve tried to do it twice before, but I think I’m ready now.

Barbara Morton

THE REVERSION - PART I (Chapter 7)

THE REVERSION INDEX 

The Reversion

by Planet

Chapter 7

Text only:

Chapter 7

November 17 – 11:17 am.

I have been staying at Jane’s house these last two days. It’s nice to see her and the kids.

We went out last night and she introduced me to Malcolm, who was dining there too. Not a coincidence, I’m sure.

She indeed seems a lot happier, and is in touch with a lawyer who will help her file a divorce. I’m quite glad for her. She has not confronted Thomas yet, though.

On a completely unrelated note, this morning they released the trailer from the much-hyped first movie produced after The Reversion.

One look at the scantily clad female lead makes obvious it will play on the fantasies of its male director, a former teenager. You won’t find me in the theater, but I’m ready to bet a lot of boys turned men will be there.

November 20 – 11:31 pm.

I cannot believe we missed such an important information for so long, but today we had a briefing and the veracity of the report has been confirmed: a man in Greenland called Lawrence Ericson wasn’t affected at all by The Reversion.

Up until now, we believed only the astronauts in the space stations were the only unaffected humans, since the radiation did not carry out of the atmosphere, so this report is probably the most important one so far.

He’s a 31 years old, who was raising his daughter of 11 as a single father. He got ready for the changes after they were announced, but the minutes passed and nothing happened to him.

His daughter did become 25, but according to their documents, he’s still her father, which is positively strange. Their still living together but he says they relate more as brother and sister now, due to the small age difference.

We won’t go to Alaska but they will bring him here to study him. There’s a chance his genetic code reveals some kind of immunity to the radiation. We could even try and develop a cure based on it.

November 26 – 12:04 pm.

Jane invited me for a nice day out in Malcolm’s cottage. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, and I hope things work between them.

I think she told Thomas she was travelling with me as an alibi. Malcolm sides with me about the need to tell Thomas about the divorce plans already, but Jane is still afraid.

November 29 – 1:43 pm.

Today we had another very important and unexpected briefing with the President. He informed us of a very important development. Three days ago, NASA discovered the source of the radiation.

In all, 890 small devices positioned in the planet’s thermosphere have been recovered since then. They were triggered simultaneously, releasing the energy.

They still don’t know how they operate, or who manufactured them, but it’s a start.

The devices are round and roughly the size of a volleyball. While they were examined, one of them was accidentally triggered, releasing the radiation and the blue lights inside the laboratory, but none of the scientists were affected. It’s not surprising, since we already know we’re immune to it after the first exposure.

I’m proposing trying to create a concentrate serum based on the device energy, which may do the trick and get us closer to our original ages. It’s worth a shot.

December 12 – 4:06 pm.

Working relentlessly on both the development of the serum and in trying to identify what made Lawrence Ericson immune. This last thing is proving unfruitful, but I have faith in the serum.

By now, we have dissected the devices and have gained some knowledge in it’s chemical components. It’s too complex and we’re far from really understanding it, but I think we should simply try and duplicate it, even if we’ll never know exactly how it works.

It’s a pity we have so much to do, because Christmas is in the air already.

Today, nevertheless, I was away from work for the first time since I began, because Jane finally decided to get rid of Thomas.

I’m staying with her to support her, but Ashley, Jonas, and Malcolm will have to taken over for me tomorrow. There’s still a lot to do in the labs.

December 17 – 10:03 pm.

There’s finally something substantial to report. We’ve developed something that might cause a change in our bodies, even if it’s quite improbable we’ll ever be able to reverse the reality changes.

What we’re aiming to do is to radiate a person who has been simultaneously injected with the serum we developed. For this, we’ll use some special equipment they’ve built in the School of Engineering and Applied Science from Columbia University.

We’ll go to New York and test the procedure on Christmas Eve. We’ll be testing it on both a new child and a new adult. For the child, we got a little girl from Columbia, who was a former professor there.

I’ve volunteered to be the adult tester.

December 23 – 3:37 am.

In a New York suite right now.

Can’t sleep. I’m so nervous!

Youth Yanker II

A very special post!

A few days ago, me and the great blogger tehswitcher talked about making some collaborative pieces.

This is the first of them (I hope there can be more in the future). I made it as a sequel to tehswitcher's original story, titled Youth Yanker. You can read it here.

Thanks to tehswitcher for this opportunity!

Previous story: Youth Yanker (by tehswitcher)

THE REVERSION - PART I (Chapter 6)

THE REVERSION INDEX 

The Reversion

by Planet

Chapter 6

Text version:

Chapter 6

October 7 – 9:20 pm.

Finally getting some rest. What an exhausting day. Lately, every day has been exhausting, actually, which is why I haven’t updated my diary any more.

As tiring as my new role might be, I’m actually enjoying it. Maybe it’s because I’m doing something relevant for human kind, but I feel it’s quite rewarding. I mean rewarding as a figure of speech, of course. It’s not like we have discovered anything significant yet.

We’re no closer to find how The Reversion operates. Fact is, we are trying to find an answer to something we can’t quite grasp.

Medically, I’ve witnessed how the mysterious energy affects a human body. How it makes hormones react in an specific way in a matter of minutes, and how it does things we believed impossible until now, like making bones smaller.

But what about the effects in our surroundings? I don’t think my fellow investigators will ever find a scientific answer to how clothes are transformed and identities rearranged.

I’m starting to believe that only the paranormal section of the team has any change of discovering something, as much as my logical mind opposes to the idea.

We haven’t been able to help the Pentagon identify the responsible agent either. Is it human? An alien? Or is it, as some have suggested, a work from God? I do not think that. If a deity had been involved, the deed would have been perfect, and there are hundreds of instances of what we call reversion Paradoxes. That means that, as careful as the construction of the new reality obviously is, there are several gaps in logic. The most glaring one? If all adults are now 25, and all our children are ten, that means we had them at 15 in this new reality? And so on.

Anyhow, I’m now starting a new phase of the investigations: I’ll check on the anomalies: those few people who haven’t been transformed according to the same rules as the majority.

Lena plays a large role in identifying interesting cases and reporting them to us. Mostly, people volunteer this information: they write to her from all parts of the world. She shares the relevant ones, but still finds time to try and answer everyone, regardless of their overall importance: I saw her the other day giggling at a particularly cute letter from a little girl in South America, written in crayons.

So, this means I will be travelling a lot for the next few months. Tomorrow we’re set for Lena’s hometown in the Bahamas, the place when everything started, to see if we find anything.

October 9 – 5:48 pm.

We arrived safely to the island yesterday. We had a nice reception at the hotel, and today we’re starting the inquiries.

October 20 – 2:59 pm.

Today is our last day in Bahamas. We still don’t know why they chose this place to attack first, but maybe it just was because it’s a very isolated spot.

There’s something relevant, of course. The second attack also impacted here (they saw the lights again), but they weren’t affected from it. We think you become immune to the effects of the energy after the first exposition.

That’s bad news. It means that, if we ever find a way of recreating it, we won’t be able to revert anyone.

As our spirits were down, Lena wanted us to relax in her favorite club. We couldn’t say no to that and it was uplifting.

October 23 – 8:56 am.

Examining anomalies these last few days. There was this old woman, for instance, who started regressing like every other adult. Instead of becoming 10, though, she stopped at 25. She’s obviously quite happy about the situation.

October 27 – 7:36 pm.

Studied another curious anomaly yesterday: a 14 years old boy aged into a 25 years old, but his gender got reversed! He’s now a female adult version of himself. He, or rather she, is working as an interior designer in Canada, and we paid him a visit.

I believe her DNA had somehow imprinted on the genetic code of her twin sister, who was stillborn. Maybe The Reversion energy picked it up and make it emerge. Luckily, these gender changes appear to be very rare.

October 28 – 3:45 am.

Got a late call from Jane tonight because she forgot the time difference. Now I can‘t sleep, but luckily, I’ve got an intersting view from my room here in Prague.

It turns out Jane has decided to pay Thomas’ treachery with the same coin: she tracked her school crush Malcom’s location. He’s still single, and Jane has begun an affair with him. I don’t necessarily approve of this response, and I think she should simply terminate her marriage before anything else, but at least it’s a good sign she has decided to put her own happiness before that creep of a husband.

November 2 – 11:05 pm.

More aging anomalies this week, including children bellow 5 who still aged to 25, a 17 years old girl who progressed instead of regressing, despite being past the regular age, and a couple of former kids who aged past 25. There’s a girl who became 32 and a new man of 41. He’s the oldest person in the World, as far as we know.

November 4 – 10:10 pm.

Lena Underwood and I have become fast friends. We are in Russia right now, and today was our day off.

Had a good time visiting the city with her, and we even went shopping for a while. She purchased a gorgeous leather jacket that I wouldn’t be able to wear in such a cold climate. I was wearing a very fluffy coat.

Walking with her is like doing so with a movie star. Everybody recognizes her, and then there’s the paparazzis. I’ve been spotted with her so many times now that now they know me too, and are becoming quite annoying. Thankfully, our security escorts, the Secret Service twins, are glad to drive them off.

By the way, we had a good laugh with the twins today. We were walking in the street when they were offered a good time by three… uhm… sex workers. They blushed, and stammered, and it was simply too funny. Now Lena can’t stop making a very good impersonation of their Russian accents in front of the twins.

November 9 – 3:50 pm.

Today in Hamburg, I came across the most extreme reality change I’ve studied so far. I was conducted into a modern building to meet the victim, who is the CEO.

Cristina Juárez was a Mexican girl of 12, who recently moved with her family to this city. Then The Reversion hit and, while there were no problems with her aging and she became 25 as expected, she made a full transition into a German citizen named Kirsten Junger.

Not only is her new phenotype obviously Teutonic, with her now fair hair and skin, but she has also lost any knowledge of the Spanish language. She's now capable of speaking German in a native level, and her new documentation identify her as being born in Germany. None other of her family members has been affected this way.

As bizarre as this is, it’s not an isolated incident, and there are more reports of this than I would have anticipated. Rarer, are other reality-warping anomalies, like a baby who, though unchanged, became the legal owner of a large company and the father of three adults, or the girl who grew up into an exact duplicate of her pop singer idol, down to her voice and musical abilities. Lena is even set to interview a pair of siblings who are now married to each other, which is extremely uncommon, according to our surveys.

November 13 – 10:05 pm.

In a plane right now. We’re all returning to Washington today. The twins drove me to the airport, and as I suspected, there was a lot of media coverage. They indeed know who I am now , and many a photographer yelled “Doctor Morton!” when I arrived.

Our anomalies research tour is over. Can’t say we’re much wiser as to what exactly happened. You can see the disappointment in all team members, though there’s still a few lines of research we’ll attempt. But we all craved for something a little more enouraging to report on our return.

It’ll be good to see my family, though. Bought a few mementos for the kids.