He wanted to scream, to yell, to demand that things be put right.  But he could do nothing of the sort.  He could not move.  He could not even breathe.  He did not understand what had happened when the Venn Machine had activated under his daughter’s command.  He did not know what was happening.  There was a muffled squeak that sounded like his daughter suppressing a giggle, then footsteps approaching.

He felt his move, but it was not his body.  Not a body.  His shape fluttered through the air in his daughter’s hands.  His wife’s voice answered, but he could not understand it.  It sounded like she did when his hearing aids were off.  The thought briefly amused him until he recognized the fate it implied.  He could not see.  He could barely hear.  He was entirely cut off from the world.  This only got further emphasized when he was deposited in a box and the little noise he could hear got cut off by the closing of a door.

In the silent darkness he contemplated his future.  He’d never had a very good imagination for things, his mind ran on numbers.  He calmed himself by counting seconds.  Before long, the only thing that existed for him were the numbers.

At 247, he heard the box open again, and felt his shape flutter once more in the grip of something he had trouble imagining.  Logic suggested a hand, but there was no logic to be found in his existence.  Swinging back and forth made it hard to count, and then he felt something warm and soft filling him out.  He tried to visualize what he’d become, and couldn’t.

Despite his failure of imagination, his form felt proper and right.  It was stretched and smooth all over, not crumpled.  It shifted and bounced as the warm flesh inside it moved.  A gentle pat and encouraging words gave him the oddest feeling.  Pride.  Whatever he was, he was doing something right.  The feeling persisted after fabric pressed against him from the other side, muting and muffling the world around him.  He could feel his shape move and shift, could feel vibrations in the timbre of his daughter’s voice, but could not hear her well enough to understand what she was saying.

The talking continued, but he stopped paying attention, it became background noise until it stopped, and the swaying began.  Once again he tried to count, but the constant motion kept distracting him.  Every time he got used to a pattern, it changed.  Later, there was strong pressure against him, pinning him in place.  After that, more movement, some talking, another eternity of random motion.

Then the pressure went away, fabric sliding against him.  He felt the shape filling his form shift and shimmy, then the tension was abruptly released, and he fluttered through the air and onto something soft and yielding.  He felt his form crumple.  He had been discarded.

The very idea sparked his original fury for a time.  He again wanted to yell, but could not.  To thrash about at his dark foes, and show them he was not...  But there was nothing to focus on.  He wasn’t even sure who had worn him.  Could not figure out his position, or form any image of what his environment must be like.  His anger bled away in the warm, quiet, darkness.

Once he’d given up on anger, he tried reason.  But he had nothing to connect to.  Every attempt to organize his thoughts demanded paper, pen, and the ability to read what he had written.  Desperate, he resumed counting, clinging to numbers as his only lifeline.  

35,729.  Then something happened.  His form fluttered and shifted, then took up tension as the warmth and pressure returned.  The feeling of fabric tightening around him felt almost comforting.  It muted a world he could no longer connect with, could barely remember, and could not imagine.  Counting was hopeless against the distraction of movement, and it went on for so long.  So long.  Once it was over, he was once again bereft of warmth, folded against himself in ways that should have felt entirely wrong, but that he’d given up on trying to understand.

There was gentle pressure against him, patting twice.  Gentle words in a soft reassuring tone.  He could not understand them, but something about their lilt suggested he had done his job well.  He didn’t need to understand the job to do it.  Pleased by that revelation, he felt his consciousness pulled toward the oblivion of sleep.  He didn’t even need to count before he was gone.

Shaking wakes him to tension and fullness.  Counting fails him every time the motion changes.  He manages to count the number of times he loses track of his count, and siezes on that instead.  He is crumpled again after 37 interruptions.  The fourth crumple is after another 33.  He loses count of interruptions, then of crumplings.  Counting itself became difficult.  He could remember which number came next, but remembering where he was became too slippery.

Eventually even numbers escaped him.  He clung on to his favourite, 17, for some time, but lost all sense of context for it.

In the end there was only purpose.  A task to fulfill, that it did well.  A glow of pride in a job well done, that it kept.  Memory, time, numbers, thought... all gone.  When laid to rest, not even pride, just... nothing.

An unknown time later, something changed.  It crumpled on a hard cold surface, not a warm soft one.  Light and sound bombarded its senses.  Speech: frantic, questioning, incomprehensible.

Someone pulled it upright and it was dragged a short distance and deposited on something not-flat but soft.  Other things waved in the light.  Words.  Questions?  Two images held up, and its gaze focussed on the pretty blue fabric.

More stumbling, and then blessed darkness returned.

Caroline exited the Venn Machine, and stared down at the pretty blue bra she’d worn for the past year.  She scooped it up, and hugged it to her chest.  “I promise I’ll take good care of him.”

Her mother chuckled softly.  “If the past year was anything to go by...”

“Want another go?” Caroline asked with a giggle.  “You did make a very cute set.”

“OK.”