Chapter 14: Got me a lobotomy for free.

September 6th, 2020, Salinas, California - Earth

He had come home late from his journey into the past. Time travel always took longer than you thought it would. He quietly opened the master bedroom door and crept in. He tucked into his spot and rolled over, noticing a presence there. It had been more than a year since he had slept in a bed with another person, but he instinctively cuddled up to her. His last thoughts before falling into slumber were that perhaps Mira had forgiven him.

Early in the morning Howard woke and realized he had slept with Grace. It bothered him that it wasn't bothering him. He wondered if he should take a blanket and pillow and go sleep on a couch. He decided to get up for the day and start to work on his project.

A year ago, it would have taken months, maybe years of hard work in photoshop. Now he had an ace up his sleeve.

At the software company he worked at, it was just called a “Stochastic Parrot.” Artificial intelligence was illegal. This was just a tool to help with touching up e-mails, pictures, and audio. Nothing fancy. He pulled the latest version onto his home machine and set it on the task of learning every single picture he had digitized. He took high quality pictures of himself as well, wearing different outfits from as many angles as possible. He also found as many old pictures in storage of himself and put in those as well.

He was reading the transcripts from yesterday, thinking about how best to approach each picture. He moved his mouth to the microphone and was about to hit record when he stopped himself.

“This is fucked. This is the most fucked thing to happen on this planet.” Howard was never good at history. It wasn't even the worst thing to happen in California in living memory. He might have stopped the project right there if Grace had not arrived at his moment of doubt. She told him when and where to look on the video recordings. She had marked the time yesterday when she visited Mira's room. He started watching when Charles had crept in the door.

It had happened in his house. He had been out of the house for a day and his wife had cheated on him with an old flame. Eventually the two's diapers couldn't hold up to that much fun and they went at it the normal way, so yes, they did have sex multiple times in a four-hour period. The worst part was the conversation that was recorded at the start.

“Did you love him?”

“No”

Just because he put her in those diapers didn't mean she had the right to use them anyway she wanted! They were still married. Their daughter had been home at the time.

His parrot friend was helpful in completing his vision. Find and replace Alan out of every photo, and put an equivalent picture of Howard in. He wrote a script around some of his older pictures to help with de-aging his features and matching the color, lighting, and clothing expected from the older cameras and time. Plus, once he got enough of his voice in the system, Mr. Stochastic was able to create versions from Alan's recordings.

Grace was in love with the idea. It was the kind of stuff you'd find in the advanced textbooks. She told him about the dodo bird, and suggested he include some of the newfound footage. Building the slide show took hours and he finished late on Sunday. Grace babysat the two lovebirds through the afternoon so he could work, but eventually she left with Charles. Howard was left alone with his wife.

“Mira, I have a surprise for you.” Howard said beaming.

“I need a surprise from you like I need my diaper changed.” That caused him to sniff the air, but he didn't notice anything.

“Who am I?”

“You're Howard, the worst husband EVER.”

He frowned. He wasn't much of a liar or an actor, but he had a plan. “See, the doctors said this might be happening. Your prions are crossed. But don't worry, your dad is here to uncross them.”

Dad's here? Where? Maybe this nightmare was coming to an end.

“I spent the whole weekend building a slide show for us to watch.”

A slide show is supposed to be fifteen, thirty minutes tops. Mira had to endure his for seven hours. They stopped for breaks and diaper changes. He told her it was kind of like taking a time machine, revisiting the past so her memory could be fixed.

Here is the hospital where she was born. Here is where they went down splash mountain together. Her first car. Her college years. It wasn't just the important stuff. There was a picture from a short play in second grade her class had performed for their parents. A picture from Nana's funeral. Her dancing at Cousin Hua's wedding. A trip to the zoo. Here she is, age eight, opening Christmas presents. Those ones she played with for one week and then never again.

The stuff that actually included him was the hardest part to figure out. Fortunately, her parents had stopped taking so many pictures once they got married. He showed her pictures of her wedding with Charles, and some pictures of the three of them plus Grace. When he got to the final picture, the barbecue where they ate the dodo, there were tears running down Mira's face. It had been the story of her life. It would have made a perfect anniversary gift - If it was six hours shorter and didn't have her husband pretending to be her dad.

When it was over, she decided to ask him. “Howard. Why did you go get a bunch of my old photos and photoshop yourself into them? We're married you're not my dad.”

“Well, every baby girl wants to marry her daddy. There's an easy way to test this. Mira, are you sexually attracted to me?”

Her mouth stopped open. It was a contradiction; her idiot husband had just pointed out something that didn't make sense. “I...”

“Look I'm your dad, you might have some feelings for me, but they're not like you have with Charles.”

“No, I don't want to have sex with you.”

“I know Charles came over with your daughter Grace this weekend. Did the two of you enjoy yourselves in the way a husband and wife should? Have a bit of fun while your daddy was out of the house?” He wiggled a bit around enjoy and fun, mimicking Charles's mating dance. He then turned darker. Her shame was clouding her vision of him, he was in shadow, his features a smear.

“Or do you want to keep punishing yourself into believing you're a horrible wife and mother. If I'm not your dad, then you cheated on your husband with your daughter's boyfriend while I was out preparing an early anniversary gift. Of course, which story you prefer is up to you, whichever better fits the facts here right?”

Daddy was doing something to her. This had to stop.

He decided he would do two trips down memory lane each day. The first one Monday morning had been a straight recording of himself over Alan's voice. For the second he had made some modifications to pictures of Mira. This was surprisingly easy to do with his parrot helper, all he had to do was give it a few suggestions and it easily changed the hours of voice.

Mira was not in a mood to go again, but he insisted, and it wasn't her choice. He said she needed to do this to undo her condition. It was like traction.

“And here is where you opened your princess potty. Remember when you put it on your head like a hat?”

“Yeah, that was great. Christmas nineteen eighty, right?” She was tired, and annoyed, how did he know about the potty hat?

“It's too bad you used it for a week and just put it away. We kept trying and trying and you never wanted to learn.”

That wasn't right. But in the follow up picture at Aunt Hua's wedding she was still wearing a diaper while dancing. At her second-grade class presentation she was wearing a diaper. It was sometimes hard to tell, but there were almost always a few signs under the clothing. A bulge in a wrong spot, a bit of liner up above the pants, or a shirt tucked in wrong.

“Oh, and our trip to Disney Land. Remember when I held you so tight and you just laughed. You wanted to go on the ride again, but you had splashed your pants in more ways than one and you needed a change. By the time we got back the line was too long. We told you we'd go again some other time. I'm sorry we didn't go again. We should go again. When you're better.” He seemed almost sad at the end, he was assuming the guilt of another father, he wanted to be the better dad.

That's not how that happened. Howard isn't daddy. She was potty trained. She squeezed below. See! She wasn't that wet yet.

And then in college, “Oh we were so proud of you, getting into Caltech, the smartest little diaper wearer in the whole State. But you weren't the only one! Remember when you met Professor Finnigan?”

That wasn't Charles' name. Finnigan was Grace's name, and she was their daughter. But Grace wasn't married, so maybe she got the name from her dad? None of this made sense.

“He was such a role model for you. Both of you need extra protection to make it through the day. The two of you even came back here for one of your dates. You showed him your crib, and the two of you had a bit of fun. Now don't let Grace know we made this for you two, but you guys had insisted it be record for posterity.”

He had a video, and it looked old. A picture like this couldn't have been done with modern cameras. This was a VHS recording, with the ugly date stamp overlay typical of the nineteen ninety recorders. Mira and Charles were younger too. This wasn't just photoshop. You can't edit videos like that right?

He had Mr. Helper continue to work on generating these slideshows. The entire process could be automated. He could set her up in the morning, turn on her life, and go about his day. He only had to come back to change the occasional diaper.

Each day he moved her up just a few years. She got her potty chair on her eighth Christmas in nineteen eighty-seven. She did not get a car in high school; she got a bicycle with training wheels. She did not get into Caltech; she attended some place local. By her second video on Monday, she was no longer a gen-xer. It was neat how the system was even able to update some of the toys. She was a Barney girl in “high school.”

It started at first with her interchanging Howard and 'father'. That is when he got her to call her job and she resigned by phone. Then father and dad got mixed, and she started cooperating in the morning with dressing and cleaning. Then dad and daddy, and she would play with the toys he bought and spend her break time with cartoons. By day four she was between daddy and 'dah dah' and she let him feed her with a spoon and a bottle. The videos could go faster as more and more time was lopped off.

He was happy this was where she was. It was not zero, and he didn't want to go to zero. She still had some adult, enough for her friend Charles to enjoy. She was happy around Howard, and he knew he could trust her to be left alone and she would not try to set the house on fire. Had this been the diaper dimension this probably would have been enough.

This is Earth, and the regression stories on Earth allow for the possibility of something more.

One morning as Mira was brushing her teeth (daddy insisted she brush her teeth three times a day) when she ran out of toothpaste. She checked around the cabinets and found a tube. She did not bother reading the words, but she put the white substance on the brush and stuck it in her mouth.

It tasted funny. It kind of tasted like … adult? She knew she had this flavor once. She was not supposed to swallow toothpaste, but this was not toothpaste, right? She gulped it down.

Her pupils contracted and she blinked. The lights grew too bright and then dimmed. She had the worst headache. She scrunched her nose and brought her hands to her face, breathing through fingers. She saw herself in the mirror. No support for her breasts, hair an uncombed mess, an over-sized t-shirt covering down over her panties. The garments felt weird. She lifted the shirt and smiled. She was not that wet.

She then frowned, that is not an accomplishment. She could not take them off either, just a giant big “NO” in her head when she tried. Instead, she grabbed the toothpaste and read the active ingredients.

She mused to herself, “What pharmaceutical company would combine a phosphodiesterase blocker with a eNn-Dee-Dee-eye?” She turned the tube some more.

Warning: Do not consume - strong hippocampus agonist. Only apply directly to areas needing stimulation. Use only with diapers and as directed by family doctor. If taken orally contact regression services immediately. A Thompson and Thompson product. Distr. Juventas - Losantiville.

She took out the mess of hair bands that had loused her head and grabbed a brush to fix her hair. Daddy was in another room working on some project, giving Mira space to go to the master bedroom. She found a white blouse she felt best matched the black stretchy pants – the only adult thing she found that properly covered her diapers.

She sat down at the dining room table, and with all of her big girl voice, called across the house to Howard. “Daddy please come here.” She had thought of using his name, but with 'daddy' she hoped he would come faster.

He walked in and smiled at her. She was dressed a bit pretty this morning. His girl is growing up too fast. Then he noticed her face and look. It was that look. The one she gave him when she knew he had fucked up.

She crossed her arms and directed him to sit. “We need to talk.”

His shoulders fell, and he shrunk three inches. He pulled out a chair and slumped in. Howard refused to look her in the face.

“My brain is a bit scrambled still. When I look at you, I keep thinking back to a trip to Disney Land. It's weird because I only remember us going on one ride. Do you remember when we went on the teacups, daddy?”

He quickly turned and looked at her. The teacups did not exist anymore. As a memory that one would be hard to recreate.

“Or what we ordered from the restaurant? Do you remember if it was your anniversary or if it was mom's birthday when they brought out the special desert?”

He shook his head.

“That's the problem with photographs. They only capture a tiny part of our whole lives. Just one moment. Not the day that led up to it. Not the rest of the day afterwards.”

“I'm.”

“And they don't capture everything do they? Like, do you have any photos from the party I held when my parents went to Hawaii for a week?”

“No.”

“I've got a pretty clear memory of that. Alan, my biological father, found the beer bottles, even though I thought I got them all. Since you're my daddy now, why don't you tell me what you did after you found out.”

“Look, I'm” he was not trying to talk over her here, just seeing if she'd give him space. She did not.

“Photos don't capture the unhappy moments either. Like, I have a memory of you, daddy, back in January. That hibachi place? Did you remember to get a photo of you pigging out and drinking all that sake, even though I told you not to? And it all came out of you, such a mess of the bathroom. Maybe you should be the one in...”

“We don't need to.” He was not even sure if talking would help here.

“You forgot to change the unhappy memories. That's the thing. I can read what's in this tube because I have fifteen years of unhappy memories at work.” She flipped it at him from across the table. It flopped off him and a small glob pooled on the table cover when it landed. She hadn't put the cap back on right.

He had changed her memory of graduating from school but not working her day job. That had to have been thirty thousand or forty thousand hours of her life. How do you remove those memories?

“And you know how I know you're my pathetic, worthless husband pretending to be my dad?”

“Your prions are firing again. Let's just ...” He could not remember what Grace had told him to say. Something about a condition?

And she finished with a knife to cut out his heart. She knew how to push his buttons.

“Twenty years of unhappy marriage. Waking up next to you every single day. Going to my unhappy job. Raising my ungrateful daughter into a whore who sleeps with her teachers for a better grade.”

He waited to see if she was done, and then finally looked at her. Stared so deeply she couldn't hold his gaze. He owned the room now. She shivered in anticipation. He looked just like her dad back when he had spanked her after she had tried to start a fire.

“I see. Are you done complaining? Would you like to hear my side?”

“Go ahead. Explain this. Explain THIS.” She pointed at her crotch, her voice quaking with false bravado.

“It was Bonny's birthday. We got some tapioca thing, it was awful. You ate the whole thing and vomited in the hotel room. They had to get us a new room.”

Her eyes got wide; her mouth gaped. She felt she needed to say something. She could not process it in time and Howard got the next word.

“We left you the house so you could do something fun for your senior year. I was upset you didn't do enough to hide it. The neighbors complained. I made you get a job, since you wanted to be a grown-up, to pay us back for the damage to the house your friends did. It was some local sandwich thing that doesn't exist anymore, I don't remember the name. You were fired in three weeks because you kept eating the capicola between customer orders.”

“That's not why I was fired.” She never told that story to her husband.

He shrugged; the details did not matter.

“Oh, and I knew you hated it. What was the one thing I told you for fifteen years.”

Just quit, we can move closer to my work. You will be happier. It will be good for us.

Howard sighed. “Twenty years. Twenty unhappy years. Name three things you hated. I'll give you Hibachi, I forgot that one.”

“The kabobs” She snapped it off.

“That was your mistake. OK, fine you can have that one too.” That felt good. He was letting her win even in the places he knew he was right.

“And you spanked me.” She gave her final complaint.

Howard thought that was too much, “You tried to set the house on fire.”

“Well, my real daddy never spanked me” She smirked.

“Alan spanked you all the time.” He started to laugh. “I like this. We're getting closer. You're now naming things from after.”

“You freak-a-zoid, I want a divorce, right now! I am going to call my real parents and I am going to call the cops and I'm going to go to a brain doctor and freak-a-you out of my head.”

He ignored her, “Hey Grace,” He shouted down the hall. “You'll love this. Your mom is having a lucid moment.”

“Coming.” Mira heard thumping from down the hall. She took a moment to look around the living room. This was her dining room table, but the room was wrong. This was not the house she had spent the last ten years in.

Grace waddled into the room; her stomach was the size of a small watermelon. Her hair was extra short, and she wore a long loose dress.

“Oh, hey Mom! Good to see you again. I think you have my shirt on. It looks pretty good on you.”

Mira looked down; the shirt was inside out.

“What's going on? Grace are you pregnant?” She got quiet, “Is it Charles'?”

Grace smiled and gave a soft laugh, she moved up close to Howard and put her hand on his shoulder, “You're right Howard this is incredible. How long does she usually last like this?”

“I don't know, it varies.” He started playing with his phone, “Mira you said, hibachi and the barbecue? Anything else you want me to address?” He was typing something into the screen. “Oh right, work. Not sure about that. Maybe you just stayed at the sub shop forever?” His face did that thing where he became focused on a hard problem. She would not be able to get him out of it no matter what she said.

This was insane. She had broken out. She was free. Her stomach was gurgling. She really should not have eaten that toothpaste.

It was like the time at Disney Land. It was like the time she drank too much at her party just before the senior year of high school. And soon it would be just like that time she had too much sake on her anniversary. It was all over her shirt. Grace did not mind though. She had not fit in something like that for a few years now.

Bad memories aren't like happy memories. Every bad beat story is the same. Remember that time you got spanked? Or that time you got so sick you threw up? Do you remember all the moments before or after, or just enough to contextualize the bad part? It is not so fun to go back to the bad memories. Best to avoid those thoughts, and just keep going back to the happy ones.

Howard made sure to take a picture, it would help with the slide show she would be watching later that day.