(AR Story Excerpt)

Here is an excerpt from a new commissioned story for an anonymous fan. It starts off as an AR story in this chapter, but it could become just about anything as it goes on. Thank you again, anonymous, for the commission!

The story opens with Stephen enjoying his AR fantasies on his computer, until his sister, Niki, barges into his room and catches him in the act. She leaves, and he reflects on how bad it is that she knows and how futile his fantasies of returning to childhood are to begin with. Now, he has to go down to dinner and somehow keep Niki from revealing his secret to their mother.

***

“Hello, Stephen,” his mother said as he entered the dining room. “Go grab yourself some spaghetti.”

Steven saw his sister eating at the dining room table. Their eyes met for a moment, and then she gave him a slight smirk. Any doubts he had about her seeing what he had been doing were gone. She definitely knew.

Damn it.

Steven went into the kitchen. As his mother helped him fill his plate, he wondered what he could do to keep his sister quiet about what she had seen. Maybe she would just blackmail him later, he hoped.

He returned to the dining room and took his seat at the table. As he began eating his food, he kept repeatedly glancing at his sister, wondering what she would say. For a tense moment while they were alone, he considered whispering something to her, but he could not think of the right thing to say.

Then, their mother came in and joined them at the table with her plate of spaghetti, prompting his sister to say, “Mom, you promised. No lab coats at the table.”

“Oh,” she said, looking down at the white lab coat she was still wearing. “Forgot I had it on.”

She stood up and took her coat off, revealing a modest green shirt and a pair of dark pants. Although it had been years since she had done research in an actual lab, she still dressed the part in her private basement lab, and she would have dressed that way everywhere if her kids had not demanded some separation between her work life and home life, even if the two lives overlapped under one roof.

“So,” their mother said as she returned to her seat in the proper attire. “How’s the food?”

“Delicious,” Niki said. “Thank you.”

“It’s great,” Stephen said. “Thanks.”

“Good,” their mother said. “So, what are the two of you up to tonight?”

“I’m going out,” his sister said.

“With whom?” their mother asked.

“Just some friends,” Niki said and took a bite of her dinner to avoid saying any more.

Stephen noticed his sister’s outfit. She was wearing a white spaghetti strap crop top with a gray, loose knit, button up sweater draped over it. Additionally, she had on a bit too much makeup and had clearly spent some time arranging her blonde hair in a fashionable bun. She was showing off her newly 18-year-old body, revealing little peeks of skin everywhere but trying to be subtle about it.

Although their mother was pretty oblivious about Niki’s social life, it was clear to Stephen that Niki had a date, which was pretty normal for her. Being as pretty as she was meant that she had no problems finding dates. 

“How about you, Stephen?” their mother asked.

“Oh,” he said, wincing a little as he considered his own lack of a social life. “I don’t have any plans. Just staying in. Playing some games on my computer.”

“Stephen just loves being alone and playing with himself,” Niki said.

Stephen gave her a look and then glanced worriedly at their mother who seemed to have missed Niki’s meaning.

“And, how are you doing on the job hunt?” their mother asked.

“Still looking,” Stephen lied.

“Have you reconsidered signing up for classes this fall?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said, but the idea of going to community college was only slightly less annoying than getting a job. “I’ll look into it.”

His mother sighed and set down her fork. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “It’s been over a year now since you graduated. I was willing to accept that you wanted to have a gap year after high school, but you need to do something with your life.”

Stephen had no good reply.

Niki explained, “Stephen just wants to keep living like a kid. I mean, he still sleeps in the same bed he’s had since grade school. He hates the idea of being an adult.”

Stephen wanted to argue, but he had to admit to himself that she was right about him.

“Seriously,” she continued. “I bet he’d still be in diapers if he could be.”

And, that was it. She had said it out loud. That was what she had seen him looking at, a diaper fantasy. She had called him out, which was devastating, but at the same time, she had avoided giving away the whole truth. She had said nothing about porn. They would need to have a talk later, he decided. It seemed as if she were playing a game with him, and he would need to find out what the rules were.

“Nicole,” their mother said. “Be nice.”

“Sorry,” Niki said. “I’m just telling it like I see it.”

Stephen was desperate to change the subject. “I’m going to be fine,” he said. “I’ll get a job soon. Don’t worry about me.”

“Stephen,” their mother said. “I’m not trying to pressure you. I just…”

“It’s fine. I know you’re just asking because you care. I get it. I’ll start working on adulthood stuff. Don’t worry.”

“Well,” she said. “That’s a relief. You let me know if you need any help.”

“Sure,” he said. “If I ever catch you out of your lab, I’ll be sure to get your help.”

She sighed. “I know I’ve been busy with my work lately. You should understand, though, that I’m close to a big breakthrough.”

“Another breakthrough,” he said with more than a trace of annoyance in his voice. “Didn’t the last one already make you rich?”

“It did,” she said.

That was an understatement. His mother had managed to engineer a brain-computer neural interface that would allow a computer to read a person’s thoughts. That would have been an incredible achievement by itself. What was even more incredible about it, though, was that it worked by only touching a person’s skin. She had quickly patented her invention, and all the big tech companies had raced to sell her technology to the world. After that, the money had flowed in like a river. Many people would have taken that success as an excuse to live a life of leisure as a wealthy inventor. Not their mother, though. She had used her fortune as a way to fund further research, moving her work into the basement of their house for secrecy’s sake. Instead of new cars and big mansions, she had invested in lab equipment and electronics. For the past couple of years, she had worked in relative silence on some new project that she had revealed to no one, not even her own children.

“What is this big breakthrough?” Stephen asked.

“Well,” she said, with a faint smile. “I’ll give you a hint, I suppose. Do you notice anything different about me?”

Niki and Stephen stared at her for a few seconds.

“New haircut?” Niki guessed.

“No,” their mother said. “Try again.”

Stephen looked carefully but saw nothing different about her. He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “I give up.”

Her smile faded. “You didn’t notice my glasses?” she asked as she adjusted them on her nose.

“Those old red ones?” Niki asked. “What about them?”

“What?” their mother said. “‘Old?’ What do you mean?”

“You wear those all the time,” Stephen said.

“But, I’ve never…” she stumbled to say. “I mean, they weren’t…” Then, a look of realization appeared on her face. “You really don’t know what happened. That’s interesting... very interesting. Hmm…” She stood up from the table, grabbed her lab coat, and walked down into her basement lab without excusing herself, leaving her half-eaten dinner behind to go cold.

Neither of her children bothered to say anything in response. This was actually pretty standard for a dinner with her. At some point, an idea might occur to her. Then, without another word, she would wander off to explore it in her lab, leaving her family or dinner guests behind to wonder what was going on in her head.

“There she goes again,” Niki said as she finished her dinner. “Off to make another fortune.”

Now that they were alone, Stephen decided that this was a good time for a serious talk with her. “Please don’t tell her,” he said. There was no point in threatening her, he realized. Maybe she would take pity on him.

“Tell her what?” she asked, playing dumb.

“You know what.”

“Oh,” she said. “You mean about what you were doing in your room. I don’t think that would surprise her much. I’m sure she’s aware that you’ve never had a girlfriend.”

He sighed. It was clear that Niki was going to make this painful. “I mean it,” he said. “It’s just a harmless fantasy. No one has to know about it. Okay?”

“If it’s so harmless, then why are you so worried about people knowing?”

“What do you want?” he asked, getting to the point.

“Nothing right now,” she said. “But, I might need something from you later, a favor maybe. I’ll keep quiet about your kinky fantasies for now, but I won’t forget about them.”

Stephen nodded. That was probably the best he could hope for from Niki, just a silent bit of blackmail. “Well, thanks for that at least,” he said.

“Just make sure you keep yourself out of trouble,” she said. “It would really suck for Mom and me if the police knocked down the door because of something dirty you downloaded on your computer. Okay?”

“You don’t need to worry about…”

A car horn honked from outside.

“That’s my date,” she said. “He’s really cute. I’m probably going to be out really late tonight with him. And, if you want me to keep quiet about what I saw tonight, you won’t say a word to Mom about him or any other guy I go out with… ever. Understand?”

He nodded.

She stood up, and Steven got a good look at her fashionably ripped jean shorts and low-top canvas shoes as she walked to the door. “Bye, bye!” she said with a wave. “Have fun with yourself tonight. We’ll talk more about our arrangement tomorrow.” Then, she was out the door to join her date.

Stephen sat there alone for a minute before finishing his meal and then cleaning up for the two women who had just walked out on him.

***

Stephen went to bed that night, feeling acutely alone. He considered revisiting his fantasies from earlier in the night. Instead, he lay in bed, trying to remember when he had first taken an interest in age regression. He was asleep before he could find the memory.

The next morning on his way to the bathroom, he paused in front of his sister’s half-open door and peeked inside of her room. He found her sleeping face down on her bed, still fully dressed, leaving him to wonder just how late she had come home to be too tired to even take off her shoes. He left her there to rest, used the bathroom, and headed off to make some breakfast.

There was no sign of his mother in her bedroom or downstairs when he went to the kitchen to make a PB and J sandwich. Either she was in her lab already, or, like his sister, she may have stayed up late. Although Stephen had not seen the basement for years now, he believed that she had set up a cot down there for sleeping, since there were nights when he was sure that she never emerged from the basement at all. He suspected that last night had been one of those all-nighters for her.

As he finished making his sandwich, Stephen began to wonder how his life had become so comparatively boring. His sister was out having a wild time most nights, while his mother was working on some cutting edge science experiment in the basement. Meanwhile, he was on his computer looking up perverted porn. To each their own.

He poured himself a glass of milk and added chocolate syrup to it with no shame. It was one more little bit of childhood he refused to give up. After all, why should anyone drink plain milk when chocolate milk is an option? Then, he settled in to the living room sofa, put some cartoon on the TV, and ate his breakfast.

Following his breakfast, he decided the morning was hot enough to justify having some dessert. He checked in the freezer and found a box of Fudgsicles. Just when he had unwrapped one and began to eat it, he heard the sound of a loud crash coming from the basement as if many things had fallen over at once.

“Stephen! Nichole!” his mother cried from downstairs. “Someone help me! I’m stuck!”

Stephen headed for the basement, pausing just a moment at the “Keep Out” sign before opening the door to his mother’s secret lab. Then, he raced down the steps to help her.

“Mom?” he called to her when he entered the basement. Since he had last seen the room, it had become a maze of shelves holding electrical equipment. There was no sign of her among the machinery.

“Over here!” she yelled from one corner.

Stephen made his way towards her voice, stepping over wires and sidling around shelves until he reached her. She was trapped under a pile of boxes, which appeared to have fallen from a shelf and landed on top of her. Stephen set down his Fudgsicle, and started moving boxes off of her.

When he moved the last box, she grunted and said, “Oh, thank you. I was just trying to reach something on the top shelf when everything tipped over on me.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I think I’m just a little bruised. Otherwise, I’m fine.”

Stephen offered her his hand. She took it in hers, and he helped her stand up again.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “I might need to sit down for a minute, though.”

Stephen followed her over to a bank of computer monitors that were situated at the center of all the machines and wires. Next to the monitors was a larger machine that looked like a furnace, but with more wires and lights attached to it. In front of the large machine was something he recognized, a small platform with one of his mother’s patented mind-reading touch pads set flat on top of it. The pad was just high enough and large enough for a person to rest a whole hand spread out on it.

His mother sat down on her computer chair and checked her elbow to see if it was bleeding. “Looks like I don’t even need a bandage,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

“Oh,” she said and frowned.

“What? Is something wrong?”

“Your Fudgsicle.” She pointed at the floor.

“Oh,” he said and went to pick up his dessert treat. It had begun to melt on the floor, and when he retrieved it, it continued to drip. “I’ll clean it up. Do you have any paper towels down here?”

She smiled, which made Stephen nervous. It was one of those eureka smiles that came when she had a bright idea. “I have a better idea,” she said. “What if I could make it so that it had never started to melt at all?”

“Eh?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“Come here,” she said as she started typing something on her keyboard. “Bring the Fudgsicle.”

“Okay?” he said when he was standing next to her. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Watch!” she said. She flipped a switch and machines all over the room hummed to life. The whole lab buzzed with energy like a robotic beehive. Then, she walked over to the touch pad, and paused a moment before touching it. “You prefer ice cream bars to Fudgsicles don’t you?”

“Um, yeah?”

She smiled and said, “Come stand next to me.”

He stepped closer to her.

“Watch this,” she said and placed her hand on the touch pad. Then, she closed her eyes and appeared to concentrate on something.

The computer beeped, and the large machine in front of them whirred to life, and a glow emanated from it that blinded Stephen for a moment, sending a tingling sensation through his whole body. Then, the sound in the room faded away until there was nothing but the regular background whir of cooling fans.

Stephen blinked. “What was that?” he asked.

His mother turned and pointed at the dessert he was holding. “Look,” she said, proudly.

Stephen was now holding an uneaten ice cream bar where he had been holding a melting Fudgsicle only a moment ago. The dessert had never left his hand, but it had been replaced with a new one somehow.

“Now,” she said. “Here’s the big question: do you notice anything different about your dessert?”

“It’s not a Fudgsicle anymore?” he said, stating the obvious.

“Yes!” she said. “You noticed it this time. Oh, it has to be proximity to the event that determines the machine’s affect on a person’s memories. That is so interesting. I wonder what the reason is for that. I certainly didn’t expect it to work that way. Still, how fascinating!”

Stephen felt like his mother had left him behind in the conversation. It was a habit of hers to keep talking without bothering to explain anything to the people listening. She just kept on thinking out loud to herself without any regard for the people around her. “What do you mean about affecting memories? What happened just now with the machine?”

She paused a moment and looked at him as if she had forgotten he was there. Then, she looked uncertain about what to do. “Well,” she said. “I don’t know if I should tell you about it or not. I suppose, since you were just a test subject for the experiment, it would only be fair to explain what the experiment was, but you have to promise not to share what I tell you with anyone, not even Niki. Do you promise?”

“Uh, sure,” he said. “I promise to keep it a secret.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, where to begin? Oh, you might want to eat that before it melts.”

Stephen looked down at the ice cream bar and said, “Is it safe?”

“Yes, of course it is... I mean, it should be.”

Stephen took a small bite. It tasted like an ordinary ice cream bar. “It’s not bad,” he said.

“It should be like any other ice cream bar that you’ve had before because it is,” she said.

“But,” he said. “How did it change?”

“Actually it didn’t. It was the world that changed, or, at least, some parts of it. Are you aware of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?”

“Is that, like, parallel universes or something?”

“No,” she said. “Well, kind of. It’s more complicated than that. Basically, the idea behind it is that there are many worlds or realities, maybe even infinite realities, and in those realities everything that could have happened in the past has happened in one or more of those other realities. With every choice, every chance occurrence, new realities are created.”

“That sounds like parallel universes to me.”

“Fine, you can call it that if that helps. Now, here’s how this idea connects to my experiment. I realized that if those other realities did in fact exist, then there should be a way to interact with them somehow, to communicate between the worlds. My first attempts at it led to the discovery of the mind reading technology. If I could have a machine communicate with a human consciousness and the complex forms within it, then it was only another leap to make that same communication bridge between two worlds.”

“So, how does that change my dessert?”

“Imagine me at the store buying ice cream. I see the Fudgsicles box and the ice cream bars box. I choose to buy the Fudgsicles in this world. At the same moment, a new world has been created in which I choose to buy the ice cream bars instead. Time passes, and this morning comes. You pick up a Fudgsicle in this world, while another you in the other world picks up an ice cream bar. Then, you both come down to the basement. I turn on my machine, I press my hand to the mind-reading plate, and I think that I want you to have an ice cream bar instead of a Fugsicle. The machine pulls the ice cream bar from the other world into this one. In fact, it collapses the two worlds together so that this new world includes the ice cream bar and no longer includes the Fudgsicle.”

“So, you just... changed reality… with your mind?”

“Sort of,” she said. “Mainly I adjusted the quantum states of two realities so that they were combined together again. Here’s the thing, though. Not only has the present changed, so has the past as well. If you go upstairs, you’ll find there’s a box of ice cream bars in the freezer now. If you ask Niki about them, she will only remember the history that includes the ice cream bars.”

“But, I don’t remember there being ice cream bars.”

“Yes, and neither do I. That was what was so surprising to me last night when you mentioned that the rims of my glasses have always been red.”

“Well, they have always been red.”

She shook her head. “No, they used to be black. I used the machine to change them from black to red. I pulled in another reality in which I had always worn red glasses instead. Your memories are from that reality.”

“Whoa,” he said. “This is kinda freaking me out a little. So, why did I notice the change this time and not the time before with your glasses?”

“It has to be due to your proximity to the machine. I’m not sure what the exact reason for it is, but it seems that being closer to the machine allows you to retain memories of the previous reality that existed before the machine collapsed the realities together. If you are too far from the machine, then your memories change along with the rest of reality.”

“So, let me see if I understand,” Stephen said, rubbing his head. “You built a machine that can transform reality by changing the past and present at the same time. The only people who will notice the changes are the ones who are standing closest to the machine. Am I right?”

“Well, pretty much. That’s an oversimplification, but yes.”

“How does it even work?”

“Well, it takes a lot of energy. Look around you. Most of the room is full of capacitor banks, basically batteries that store energy over time and then release it all really quickly. With enough energy stored up and released at once, I can bridge the two realities together using the quantum manipulator in the machine over there,” she said, indicating the large machine that had flashed at them. “Once the machine is activated, all I need to do is put my hand on the mind-reading plate, and the machine automatically tries to change reality to fit my thoughts.”

“It’s a wishing machine,” he said, his mind racing with possibilities.

“What?” she said. “No. It’s not magic. It’s science.”

“But, you just said that you wish for things, and the machine makes them true. Isn’t that a wishing machine?”

“Well…” she started to speak but apparently could not find a way to respond. “Huh,” she said after realizing he may be right.

The doorbell rang upstairs.

“Oh!” she said as if she had just remembered something. “I was expecting a delivery today. That’s probably it.” She stood up and headed out of the basement and up the stairs. Just before she was out of sight, she said, “Oh, don’t touch anything down here. It could be dangerous. I’ll be back soon.” Then, she left.

Stephen stood there alone with the wishing machine. He looked at the touch pad and held his hand out towards it. Just one idea and a touch of his hand and he could change his reality. It was almost too good to be true. He looked back at the ice cream bar in his hand to remind himself that it was true. He was holding the proof that it did work.

“But, it’s still experimental,” he cautioned himself. “It could malfunction or something. I might wish myself out of existence if I’m not careful.”

Still, all of his fantasies were one touch away from becoming reality. He walked over to the computer to see if the machine was still turned on. The monitor said the machine was “active” and there was a “90% charge” in the capacitor banks.

He was just about to walk over to the pad to use the machine, but he paused at the desk. Three framed pictures on it had caught his attention. He saw that they were family photos, which surprised him, since he had suspected that his mother had become so focused on her research that she had all but forgotten her family.

The first photo showed his mother and father together, looking younger than he had ever seen them. It was their wedding photo, and they seemed so happy together. He felt a pang of grief.

The next photo was a picture of him and his sister when they were about 12 years old. It must have been that year, since she was noticeably taller than him. For most of their childhood, people had mistaken the two of them for twins, since they were born about 11 months apart, which would make them at least “Irish Twins.” Stephen had started school a year before Niki and had always had an inch or two of height advantage on her, until puberty came for her earlier than it did for him. She blew past him in height and development for a year or so. She even started calling him “little brother” for a while. It was embarrassing to say the least, and she reveled in making him squirm in discomfort and envy.

It was that year that his father’s cancer came back out of remission again. His father had first been diagnosed just after Stephen was born. That was probably why his parents had tried for a new baby so soon. They might have felt that there was no time left and that they could not wait until later because there would not be a later. Yet, they were able to fight back the cancer, and his father went into remission just in time for Niki to be born.

The cancer came back again when Stephen and Niki were seven. The third photo was a family portrait of all four of them from that year. They were smiling, but there was a strained quality to it as if they were trying a little too hard to look happy. His father wore a hat to hide his bald head. He looked gaunt but still happy to be with his family. Stephen remembered the worry of that year very clearly and the relief when his father got well again.

Then, when Stephen was 12, the cancer came back, and his father never got well again.

Stephen looked back at the photo of his 12-year-old self, looking so fresh and energetic, just on the cusp of puberty, not yet having to deal with a another cancer battle or a dead father. If there was one time in his life he would go back to, it would be then.

He walked over to the touch pad of the machine. He imagined himself back in that young body again. His hand hovered over the pad. One touch, that’s all it would take. He hesitated. “No,” he said after a tense moment of indecision. It was too dangerous, and his mother had told him not to touch it. She had been through at lot, losing her husband and having to raise two teenagers alone. After his father’s death, she had thrown herself into her work. It was her way of grieving, he guessed. He could not mess with her passion, her source of solace. He turned to walk away.

Suddenly, his melting ice cream bar dripped on the touch pad. “Oops,” he said, and went to wipe the melted ice cream off the pad with his hand. As his hand wiped, he heard the computer beep, and the machine whirred back to life again. “Uh oh,” he said, realizing what he had just done. This time the sound became deafening, and the flash blinded him when it came.

Stephen felt a wave of energy blast through him so strongly that he was sure there would be nothing left of him when it was gone. Yet, he was still there when the sound and light in the room faded. That energy clung to him like a static charge, causing a tingle to run through his whole body as if every part of him was a limb that had fallen asleep. He felt like he was vibrating as if his body was ringing like a bell. It felt amazing. Every inch of his skin was as sensitive as the tip of his penis. Just breathing was turning in himself on. He felt himself slowly shrinking. His skin tingled where his body hair vanished. His muscles melted away, body slimming down, bones shortening, height dropping away. Suddenly, he fell backwards through puberty so quickly that it felt as if his feet lifted off the ground. He felt his T-shirt shift on him as his shoulders narrowed. Then, his shorts and underwear dropped to the floor as his clothes became too big for his prepubescent body...