Rose Windborn wasn’t the smartest genius in the world, but she was one nonetheless. Her assistant, Kriss Thompson, was an unrepentant criminal loaned to Rose on the condition that by the end of the experiment, Kriss would no longer be human. They worked well together.

Or so Rose thought.

“So, this part goes here?” Kriss looked up to the scientist with a proud grin, holding one of the last components to what Rose had simply labeled ‘the device’.

The doctor grinned, nodding eagerly. In all honesty, she hadn’t expected a convict to be so well-behaved, especially when threatened with the prospect of devolution. But Kriss had exceeded her every hope, taking on quickly to her designs.

The device was simple: it would evolutionarily regress someone as far as the user desired. There was a small pad in the center of the room for the regression, coupled with another safe area for the user and any observers.

All in all, it was almost brilliantly simple, and since Rose had overseen the development herself, she knew that nothing could possibly go wrong. The machine hummed to life as Kriss slid in the last part, and Rose practically skipped to her pad of safety.

“Okay, ready to lose that criminal sentence of yours? Don’t worry, I’ve heard that the zoo is more than eager to receive you.” Rose grinned from ear to ear, clicking the initialization switches.

“Like, of course!” Kriss clapped her hands eagerly, bouncing on her heels as she stood in the circle with an eager smile. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a monkey?”

“I know!” Rose clapped. “This is going to help our prison system so much!” She beamed, bringing her hand to the ignition array only to pause. The control panel she set up was missing.

“Oops. Looking for this?”

Rose looked up to find Kriss holding the remote with a grin. “Oh, yes!” Rose smiled eagerly, nodding. “If you wouldn’t mind, could you bring that over here?” Despite herself, she felt a bit of unease in her heart. There was something wrong about Kriss’s tone…

The convict clicked the remote to life, and Rose’s eyes widened. “No, wait, if you activate that then you’ll start changing!” She held out her hand as the device thrummed to life, beginning to work out just how she’d retrieve the ‘off’ switch from the danger area.

Then her body began to tingle, and she realized that something was very, very wrong. The woman yelped as she shrunk a foot, her body losing some of its slenderness for a distinctive pudge.

“Huh. So that’s a thousand years. Honestly, not as much as I would have expected.” Kriss chuckled, looking down to the remote. “But let’s see what this cavewoman setting does…”

Rose yelped in distress. “Wait, no! You cannot mean to do such a thing!” She paused in distress, noting how her speech sounded… oddly formal. Her heart pounded in her chest as she realized that her machine worked better than she’d planned, and she struggled to come up with how this had happened.

Luckily, even with the intellectual capacity of someone from the Dark Ages, she was still a relative genius. Even though that amounted to roughly a college education in modern times, she was still able to realize that somehow Kriss had tricked her.

“What have you done to my creation?” Rose glowered, moving from the safety zone. Before she could fully step from it, Kriss hit the remote again, a smirk on her face.

“Your notes. You made them a little too easy-to-understand. Wasn’t hard to just swap the safety and danger areas, once I pieced together what was what.” Kriss chuckled as Rose sobbed in distress.

Already the scientist could feel her intellect plummeting. The change came in time with a reduction of size and an increase in bulk; her body growing muscle. She whimpered and patted herself down, only to shriek as she noticed a dim haze setting over her mind.

“What have done? I think slow now, not dummuh! Gnuhh, think hard!” Tears dewed at Rose’s eyes as she tried to force her clumsy lips to make words. It was an effort, one that grew even harder as her brow jutted from her forehead.

“Aw, whoops. Did the scientist lose a few IQ points?” Kriss chuckled mockingly. She watched with undisguised glee as her former handler was regressed further and further, her back hunching and thick eyebrows furrowing.

“No do to me! Nuht dumm!” Rose protested, thumping her chest. She didn’t want… Well, she couldn’t quite remember what would happen if that person used that thing in her hand; but she knew that it wasn’t good!

“Mnn, music to my ears.” Kriss clicked the device again, humming as she watched the former scientist, current cavewoman scream.

“NoooOOK-OOK-AAH!” Rose’s head twitched as she began to hoot like a monkey, thick hair growing from her body and a tail curling from her spine. Her face stretched out into a round simian muzzle, which she pawed at fruitlessly.

The worst part for her was that she was even beginning to forget why she was upset. It was terrifying to her to lose everything; to lose all sense of self and everything she’d been. Desperately, the woman tried to hold onto something… Anything!

It was futile, and in a second, the chimp forgot why she was panicked. The taller creature in the room made a noise that she didn’t understand; then the animal noticed she was covered in strange, clingy cloths.

Kriss laughed as she watched what was once a proud woman tear off her clothing, leaving her a naked monkey in the middle of the room. “Well then…” She grinned, stepping from the circle. “I have to fake your emails for about a week, gives me time to try and make this little toy portable… Then we’ll just take this show on the road, won’t we?”

The monkey hooted stupidly in response, not that Kriss expected anything else.