Chapter 13: The only way out was to give in.

September 5th, 2020, Salinas, California - Earth

If Mira was bad with Howard, with Grace she tried to be a nightmare. The difference is that Grace did not give one fuck about her mother's actions.

“I'm going to smash this table.” The living room table was glass with a thick iron bar that was the bare minimum of legs and support for the glass. It was about knee height, and Grace had always hated it because she had a habit of running into it when she walked through the living room. Mira had picked up a heavy decorative book. She held it above head, ready to drop an anvil on the furniture.

“Go ahead, it's your table.” Grace reminded her.

Mira took the book and with as much force as she could brought it down. Hard. Within an inch of hitting the table she stopped. She had watched Grace and noticed her daughter had not flinched or moved.

“You're supposed to. You need to. Fidget Spinner you Grace. You can't just let someone smash stuff.”

“Why? Do you intend to be a two-year-old forever?”

Mira had not considered that. Wait, was the condition she was under not permanent? Oh no! She had broken her oven. She had drawn on the walls. She had almost smashed a thousand-dollar coffee table. She fell on her butt to the nearby couch, and crinkling filled the living room.

Charles was engrossed in the TV, he chastised them both for disturbing him, “Guys calm down, we're getting to the good part.” He turned up the volume with the remote.

“And is this drawing proof that Hitler's war machine was inspired by alien technologies? Our expert...”

Grace moved over and turned off the TV. Charlie frowned, but his dissatisfaction amounted to no more than a weak shrug. Grace had prepared for this moment. She put hands on her hips and her elbows were out. The mommy lecture position.

“We're going to have a serious talk.” This was how the books said to do it, address their diminishing adult minds with as much respect as you can, so that they work to cooperate in the regression.

“Charlie, Mira, I love you both, and I know this is hard for you, but you both have a condition. See, in my adventures at my new job, I picked up something weird. To me it was just like a mild case, diapers and dressing flirty for a few weeks, but for you two... I'm sorry.”

“Bull-logna. If this is a disease, why did it only affect us?” Mira pouted. Howard had removed some of the bad words, but she somehow had still found a way to express the idea of a naughty word without saying it.

“It's prions, like mad cow disease. You're my closest living relatives, so it makes sense it affected you both more.” Grace's answer was spoken with such confidence and speed, she had prepared for this.

Charles frowned. Damn. She actually was his daughter. “When do we get better?”

Mira was quicker than Grace, “Never! Because it's nonsense! If we were sick, you'd take us to a hospital, instead you're … you're hypnotizing us. Mind control.”

Grace laughed. “Yeah sure, which is more likely, as a scientist, which is more likely, we found a magical way to cause you to wet your pants, or maybe that dodo bird we ate on the Fourth of July was a bit undercooked.”

Mira shook her head. No, they had shish kabob, right? Or was it steak? She remembered making rice. Had Grace even been there?

“We had kah-boobs. Shut up. You weren't even there.” Mira was unsure, but she tried to be confident.

“Jesus, mom we had shish kabob last year. You said it was too much work and money and dad went off on you because you had made him make it with filet mignon.”

Mira cocked her head to the side. That sounded like some cunty thing she would do. How long ago was that? Maybe they had had dodo? A treat like that would be something Grace would be excited to get them to try. If that was the case though, what did it taste like? She could not remember what dodo tasted like.

Charles just looked down. How much of the past few weeks had been real? He had been afraid of some disease, something big in the papers and the TV channels he was not paying attention to. Maybe this was related?

“There's no cure,” Grace faked disappointment.

“No. Get me to the hospital. They can fix this. Magnets and images and radiation...” Mira threw the book she had been holding at Grace. It bounced off her daughter and fell. Grace did not move.

Grace dropped the hammer on her argument's anvil. “The cure would require obtaining a dodo bird. Do you know where the nearest dodo bird is on Earth?”

Mira threw her face into the couch pillow.

“Why not just go to that dimension again and maybe they have a cure?” Charlie tried his best to help.

Grace had the answer ready, “Just a short-lived sub dimension. They had a bad case of cosmic inflation, big rip. All gone. We could find other Earths to try to find the bird, but it's going to be hard to find.”

Charles knew. Oh, how he knew! Physics of the Multiverse was one of the reasons the physics departments were still able to have some clout. He remembered spring of two thousand, the Millennial Prize Problems. Seven unsolved problems in math. Dimensional travel had only been around for about eight years at that point. I.E.D.R had a pretty decent budget and a small team and decided to flex. June first, two thousand, they made their announcement. All seven problems, “solved” (One was provably unsolvable, but that still counted).

That was not the cool part. They gave alternate questions which had been chosen from nearby dimensions and had the answers to those as well. For fun they kept one name on one of the papers they had found, a William Gates, who had gone on to be one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the twentieth century in most worlds where he did not drop out of college to become a billionaire. That is the thing about the multiverse. It was like a giant quantum computer, just go find the universe where the answer was, and you could solve any problem.

Traveling into other dimensions for science was a bit like cheating. Taking the answers right out of the back of the book. Theoretical sciences and math became a lot less popular overnight, and those fields would need to spend a couple of generations rebuilding in this new reality. It had affected Mira directly, and she had gone to her favorite teacher in search of mentorship and advice. The two had gotten close, helping each other consider new career paths in a world that was now upside down. She still had time to switch.

She shifted her education to something more practical, biology. He would insist on keeping to his old teaching ways, but STEM was hit hard at every college. Technology and engineering and practical applications were still useful, but even there once the council started the accession process – many cutting-edge fields became outlawed. Even nuclear was a bit suspect – but it helped Earth's case most countries had not built a new nuclear plant in thirty years. The council offered all this cheap solar and wind technology as a compromise. It felt like being handed a baby's toy compared to the real thing.

Charles knew he should have gone into history. At least history was useful.

Grace moved over to the couch and started hugging Charlie. “I'm sorry, I wanted to keep that from you as long as possible. The truth is a bit much at the moment.” Now the future was frightening, and the present was confusing, but he knew he could trust his mommy to be there for him.

Mira's rage grew and her voice elevated. She brought her head up from the pillow and hugged it to her left. “You're lying. You got better. We'll get better.”

Grace turned from Charlie to look at Mira. Now to set them up against each other, hugs for one, chastisement for the other. “Well, Charles – dad - might get better, but mom, you're still getting worse. Look at yourself.”

She had a diaper on. It was soaked. The extra mass was obvious under her gray yoga pants. She had somehow gotten her yellow shirt inside out. She was missing a bra. Her hair was uncombed. She was hugging a couch pillow like a stuffed animal. In frustration she hopped up to a standing position. With all the force she could, she slammed the pillow onto the edge of the table.

Grace had a second to shield Charles with her back. She had expected glass to shatter everywhere. Instead, she heard a womp as the glass went up and came back down, before sliding off the iron rails onto the soft carpet. She turned and saw a small crack had formed on one part of the table, but the glass had held without shattering. Mira threw the pillow with all her force, and it ricocheted off an end table, knocking a potted plant over. Dirt scattered over the carpet.

Grace went over and grabbed her mother's hand while she was still in shock of the action and said, “It's OK little one. It's OK, it'll be OK, no harm was done. Let's get you in a fresh diaper and get you to nap time, OK? Get all those frustrations out of you through dream time.” She had practically memorized the first chapter on “Child Development,” she knew exactly what to say here.

Mira cried as Grace put her in a fresh diaper. Not messing around with diapers or during your changes had been an important early command. She continued to yell and cry as Grace dragged her to the crib and locked her in. She wailed as Grace closed the door and returned to Charlie. One could at least pretend not to hear her from across the house.

Charlie had gone to the kitchen and had grabbed a broom and trash bag. He was trying to pick up the dirt that had fallen when the plant was knocked over, but he was just smearing dirt into the carpet more. Grace came over and hugged him. She held her head on his shoulder, stopping him from trying to stay an adult.

“Charlie, you're my perfect little boy. You know that? Mommy loves you more than anything. I know it's going to be hard for you and Mira, but I think together you can really help each other get through this. She needs a friend right now, and you two used to be close right?”

He nodded. They had gotten pretty close, and then he had done something mean. Charles could remember the details, but Charlie did not want to delve into those memories.

“Why don't we get you cleaned up. Then you can go sneak into her crib and see how she's feeling.”

She changed his diaper and got him into a new set of clothes. Charlie looked like a toddler in his blue, white jean overalls and red and white striped shirt. A sixty-year-old toddler. Mr. Wilson dressed like Dennis the Menace. Grace had taken him to the bathroom to clean up his face and put on some of Howard's cologne. She carefully shaved his face and took away his glasses. She brushed his white hair. She wanted her boy to look good for his first date. She grabbed a flower from the pot that had been broken and directed him to Mira's room.

Charlie slowly opened the door and as soon as it was wide enough for him slid sideways into the room. He then turned and closed the door behind himself, keeping the handle turned so that it would minimize noise. He could hear Mira softly crying in her crib, her back turned to the door and looking at the wall. She had taken her shirt and pants off and was just sitting in a diaper. Charlie was able to easily reach the giant crib without her noticing. Looking down he found a memory of how she had looked when he had walked through the classroom. Her head was down taking a test. Now again as a toddler who had found himself in the nursery admiring a baby in a crib. She was a curiosity.

“I brought you something.” He reached over the netting and held the flower to her. Mira turned and just looked at it confused.

“Go away.” She didn't sound convinced it was what she wanted. The flower was at least something different to look at. Her hand reached out and grabbed it.

Charlie took it as an invitation. The netting and edge were tall, and he wasn't in shape. He pulled at the top and tried to lift his leg over.

“What are you doing?” Mira whispered.

“I'm getting in too,” Charles answered as if it wasn't obvious.

“No, don't. Just undo the latch and let me out.” Charlie looked at the lock. He could open it, maybe. He told himself he just did not want to. Instead, there was a nearby dresser. He pulled out the bottom drawer, then the middle. He climbed into the first and heard wood crack. He stepped on the second drawer and then jumped – flopped over the ledge of the crib. He hit the mattress hard, and Mira barely had time to scramble to the corner to avoid being smashed.

“Now we're both trapped in here. You happy? Push me out over the top.”

“I think I pulled something, sorry.” He feigned trying to bend up and winced. “Let's just lay here for a bit. We can talk.”

She stared at the wall again for a second and then decided to have the first adult conversation she had had in a week. “Charles, do you think what she said was true? We have the bad prions?”

“What? No that's bunk. I was exploring her room and found brochures and books. 'Son, you have a condition' is considered best practices these days. I think she picked something up in another dimension, and it's gone to her brain. Howard's too maybe.”

“So why are we...” She pointed to her head and then down below.

“Don't know. Maybe that's what 'conditions' are, things society says are true and they become true.” Wasn't that from that training thing the school made him take? The new boring one. Hadn't he fallen asleep when this was covered?

“You still feel big on the inside, right? Like, you know what you want to say but something stops you from saying it.” Charles wasn't sure he was explaining the feeling right.

“Sometimes. Sometimes I'm only big on the outside. I just get frustrated and want to throw things,” Mira balled her hands a bit with that.

“It's nice to talk like this, like adults. I haven't done this in a long while. Mira, do you mind if we just talk for a bit? I have some things I need to say and they've kind of been bottled up for a couple decades.”

“I'm not sure I want to talk to you. Do you have any idea how much you hurt me?” Mira accused him.

“You hurt me first.” He wasn't sure what he meant by saying it. It was what he had said to himself for twenty years and now that he had said it out loud it sounded stupid. She had come to him, right?

“Well, you should have been...”

“The grown up?” They both laughed at how ridiculous that sounded. He turned his head, “Eleanor, she found out. That's why I cut it off and told you to leave my life.”

“We were careful.” Mira tried.

“Apparently, I had also agreed to take Aaron out for trick-or-treating, and instead.” Halloween, two thousand. It was the day the SSC had just verified the Higgs-Boson, just like the I.E.D.R had directed them. She had applied for an internship for the following summer, only to have the opportunity snatched. Thousands of physicists were discovering they were not as smart as their alternate Earth counterparts. Sometimes literally. The job market was in freefall, a race to the bottom. She came for him for comfort. The two were not careful that day in more ways than one.

“I should have told you,” Mira finally said.

“Would it have changed anything?” It would have. He would have divorced his wife a decade earlier, probably lost his job, gone and done something else, raised Grace as his own, Howard would have gone on to something better.

She told the lie she told herself, “No. I had committed to Howard by that point. I decided he would be Grace's dad.”

He had to know, “Did you love him?”

She bit her lip and turned her head, ashamed, “No.” She had figured that out a few years back when she was wearing increasingly elaborate pajamas for bed. They were mostly crossing the 'T's' and dotting the 'I's'. It was lame. She had turned her office, the room they were now in, into a 'guest room'. After Grace moved out, she would sleep in here, stating “You snore,” “When you get up to go, you're waking me up”, or “I need to get up early.”

Charles scooted his diapered butt over, a crinkling filling the room as he slid along the crib mattress. He wrapped his arm around her. “I liked Eleanor, for a long time, but I think I reached a point I didn't. It wasn't like with us.”

“I liked being with you.” She put her head on his shoulder. Charles was probably the only person on the planet who knew what she had been going through the past few days. She took a long breath through her nose. He smelled like baby powder and old spice. She had not had sex in months. She had not even touched herself because of the diapers.

He knew what to do, it was like their first time, the endless summer of the year two thousand. “Do you still like being with me?” She nodded. He wiggled a bit holding her closer.

He made the proposition, “If we're getting worse, this might be the last time we're still adults. We should take advantage of that.”

She kissed his cheek and moved her hand to his suspender clip. She popped one. He moved his other hand up and together the two popped his other clip. His clothes began to sag, and he wiggled out of them. She grabbed his pants and pulled the outer garments off.

His diapers were nice. White and blue, pictures of bears driving rockets. She had on some Kroger brand. She wasn't even sure if Howard had thought to buy the maximum absorbency kind. Looking up at him like this, hovering over his legs, she let her eyes move up his crotch, chest and face.

Charles took off his shirt as well, throwing it partly over the rail of the crib.

“I can't take mine off.” She quietly whispered.

“I can't take mine off either.”

Charles laughed, “Maybe... maybe we should try wearing protection for once.”

She crawled up his legs, their diapers touched crouch to crouch, she was laying on his chest. “Let's try it.”

The two emulated sex to the best of their ability. Rubbing and humping and slapping. It was the best sex they had had in years. The act would become locked into their brains. Diapers are sexy.

Grace had opened the door just enough to watch her parents tumble over each other. This was normal right? Children at some point will see their parents have sex. If this could be called sex.

It could all be found in her textbook. 'Chapter Two: Diaper History to the Present – Understanding the Discovery of a Sexual Fetish'. It was important to let the littles do fun activities they liked to do as adults, but now in the comfort of diapers. Make them see themselves as individuals who needed and wanted to wear padding. The two sides of the equation needed to be made equal.

The cream she had put in both their diapers had helped things along considerably. That was certainly an interesting one on the expense reports. She had marked it as a treatment for hypertension. The directions had warned that if “playtime” lasted for more than four hours to consult a pediatrician.