Chapter 39- I never wanted to go home, there was nothing there for me.

March 1st, 2038, Washington D.C. - Earth

Oliver carefully put his finger to the handle in his mouth and popped it out. Out of an old habit he wiped it down. It was getting a little raggedy, but he still liked the original for long trips like this, it reminded him of his mom. He opened his suit vest slightly and shoved it in a coat pocket. He used another cloth to gently wipe around his mouth and face, before returning the cloth to the front pocket.

He was in DC. Arrivals. He had to go through customs, which was always a pain. He hated to explain what he was doing.

“How long have you been off Earth Mr. Swift?”

“Swift-Young.”

“Hmm, oh right sorry system didn't update on that.” Oliver handed him over his Libertalia ID out of his small wallet. It still had his original photo from fifteen years ago, still listed him as mental age six. He did not look that much older – the wonders of milk. The chronological counter was still ticking and marked him as just over 1.6 billion seconds for his body age.

“Permanent resident for fifteen years, though I come back here sometimes for work. I want to say it's been about five years?” The man he was interviewing looked old, but Oliver knew he probably was just forty or fifty. He had not seen actual old people in a while. Old little people. Returning to a properly sized world like this made him feel cramped.

“Bring anything back with you?”

“This is from Earth.” He waived his dimensional travel device. The agent had not seen one of those in a while but understood and didn't mark it. 'State' department. They do not give those to business travelers. Oliver quickly hid it. Oliver opened his coat and pulled a bit on the chain, before letting it go back in the pocket.

“Just a stress reliever for long trips.” Oliver hid the vest again and then lowered his glasses. Oliver was glad the man did not ask about the glasses.

The custom agent's eyes grew to the size of quarters. It looked expensive. On Earth it would be expensive. It was not exactly the style of the late twenty thirties, but the guard knew his name brands by sight. He was a bit of a collector himself. Expensive hobby. The agent pocketed his work dummy in his pants up and down with his right hand. It still had a bit of slobber on it. The agent's eyes darted to the clock, ten more minutes until stress break.

He should ask about the glasses. They were not in the picture. He flipped through the book quickly. He had a special passport variant only given to veterans. It had a picture of a B-52 bomber behind Oliver's information and picture.

Nine more minutes until break. The customs agent stamped the passport and handed it back to him.

“Welcome back to America. Well Earth too I guess.”

Oliver made his way through the terminal and to the front gate. He sent a message to Naomi and watched CNN on an airport monitor as he waited for her to find parking. No one on the TV wore a suit. One woman had a T-shirt with a Star Wars character on it. Mara Jade from... Episode twelve? The reboot timeline based on the Zahn books. De-Aged Karen Gillan with a virtual Harrison Ford and virtual Mark Hamill. She was good in it. Won the Oscar for best use of an imaginary prop (Dramatic Picture). She even made the lightsaber sounds herself.

Watching TV was weird for Oliver. He did not watch it back home. It was something children did.

The lady was in a debate with a man who was dressed a bit more professionally. As in, he had shorts on. Small tie. White shirt. Sandals. The diaper was hardly noticeable, just a bit stuck out when his chair swiveled to the side, but he had a bit of a twitch, so it kept happening. The host reached out his hand and stopped his guest from turning the chair and kept him focused on the other debater. The woman with the Star Wars shirt began her case.

“I'm not saying naps are bad. I'm saying nap times should be voluntary. You make it mandatory that's like making someone eat their broccoli and that's not fair. The supreme court ruled in eNn-eFff-Eye-Bee versus Sebelius that broccoli eating cannot be mandated.”

The anxious man jumped at this, “Fair? How is it fair to everyone else that does the right thing, takes a nice thirty-minute timeout and they come back refreshed. Then they have to deal with cranky co-workers. We all know what they're like, the 'two Pee eMmers'. A short nap is not that big a deal. Even fifteen minutes is allowed in some occupations. A small cup of coffee or tea, lots of extra milk, and some shuteye, and your performance jumps through the roof. The rules are quite generous, you can just close your eyes and lay there, you don't actually have to enter a different REM state for it to qualify as a nap.”

The host was agreeable, “He has a point, in the companies that don't mandate napping, all the data suggests there's little benefit after thirty-two hours of work each week. Even once hesitant corporations are now fully on board after they've seen they can push to forty or in some cases fifty without any dropout in output. Quite frankly, the staff here loves it. We get the show planned in the morning, go to lunch, have a nap, get a change, come back get everything ready for filming. We all have this extra energy and motivation.”

The woman frowned, “Changed? The bill says we have to subsidize the nap garments. Where is the funding coming from this? What if you don't want to do the intake or wear...”

“Then you aren't gonna get the most out of your nappies.” The two men laughed.

Mara Jade frowned, “This whole country has gone insane. How do you plan on enforcing this?”

The host jumped a bit, she had walked into a talking point, “Sixty percent of Americans work for a corporation that already governs their lives in ways far more paternalistic than our government. That still leaves tens of millions of people without dedicated nap times. I think it's only right that the government subsidize this.”

The man went a bit hyper, “Agreed, think of all those stressful self-employed individuals. Their families have to deal with cranky mommy and daddy's coming home. Zero naps. AND AND”

The woman tried to interrupt, “that's not”

“AND, improved sex life. I'm not saying mandatory naps will solve the fecundity crisis, but it should help mommy and daddy stay up a little bit later if they want to have some extra play time.”

Oliver heard his name called and turned. He saw Naomi at the front doors; she had two small boys with her. They both had her brown hair, but one had her darker complexion, the other wore glasses, and had a modestly fairer skin tone. The first was a bit taller, and his hair had been allowed to puff out, and his hands were pulling at his mother like he wanted to bolt at the first opportunity. He wanted to explore the whole airport and look at all the big machines.

The other was smaller and was the only one of the three with glasses. He kept his hands in his short-all pockets, and let his attention be distracted by the floor pattern. He kept walking in a slightly off way. Oliver studied his feet for a second and saw he was making L shapes with his foot patterns, up and over three with one foot and then up three and left one with the other. Naomi kept reaching back towards him, so he would keep up.

“Naomi! It's been, at least five years since we've seen each other?” She must have been twenty feet away when he started talking to her, a fine distance for starting a conversation with a big, but weird for two normal humans.

She got closer so they could have a conversation without shouting, “Yes, but you send me a report every week Oliver. Speaking of which, you don't need to tell me about which houses had ice cream cake for their birthday.” The two boys just stopped and looked at each other excitedly. They heard the I word and the C word. It was six in the morning and ice cream and cake sounded pretty good.

“Just passing on the reports as I get them. You never know what will matter and what won't.” He was not even wrong. Analytics had been using the patterns of ice cream cake consumption to estimate how new ideas were dispersing among the Amazons. It was now common knowledge there was no connection between hyperactivity and sugar consumption. There was still a strong myth that eating foods with high density sugars and fats led to bad behavior, and it was one of the most unfounded myths about littles on the planet. If Amazons were buying more decadent cake, it was a sign the bigs were open to taking the new ideas seriously. Very few “six-year-olds” on Amazonia had to suffer carrot cake for their birthday (adoption day) these days.

“Any luggage?” Naomi inquired.

“Not today. Just a short... adventure?” He bit his bottom lip hoping she would get the reference. She looked old. Being a mother had done a thing on her body. Her breasts were the size of squash. She was likely supplementing. Who would not? He was surprised it was not mandated yet.

“See, I thought it was Naomi who kept tricking Oliver to go on adventures. Yes, just a short adventure to the White House that sounds like a normal afternoon special for us, right?” They smiled.

This was “Official business”. Already, someone was responsible for covering up evidence of his arrival. Even the minivan rental was to make this look like a perfectly normal and routine tourist trip.

As they turned to the car, Naomi stopped the throng of boys and asked, “Do you have to go potty?”

Oliver, without hesitation said, “No,” but he was overridden by the smallest boy. They made a small stop, and Naomi introduced the three to each other.

“This is Jackson, he's five.” The taller one spun out of her grip and then offered his small hand to Oliver, who took it.

“And this is his grandson, Lindsay, he's about to turn six.” He played with his glasses and hid behind his great grandmother's legs.

Oliver got low and reached out his hand, “I'm an old friend of your mom’s, I don't think we met last time I was here. I'm Oliver.”

Jackson was excited, “Oliver! Like the TV show!” Amazonia had cures for diseases, clean technology, holograms, robots, the best pasta in the multiverse, and all anyone had ever heard of the place was that stupid TV show. It was not even appropriate for children to watch; the jokes were just too random, and the art style was incoherent.

He was used to it. He had probably heard that line a million times from littles whenever he introduced himself. “Yep, same one. And I take it Lindsay isn't from around here?” He reached out his hand for the other boy to shake.

Lindsay's eyes got cold, like his face aged twenty years. “I know who you are.”

The one thing every Terran knew about him, if they did at all, was that he was the one that pushed the button. Oliver slowly put his hand back, his coldness was fair and earned.

“Bit young for a Convergence twin to visit don't you think, Naomi?” Oliver asked.

She stopped the conversation, “Let's talk in the car.”

She got the two smaller ones into their seats in the back. While she did, he stood outside the car waiting for a few minutes before he realized what was wrong. He opened the front passenger seat and felt anxiety rise. Like getting into a pool slowly he sat on the chair, and awkwardly found a way for his legs to sit inside the well. It had been a long while. Naomi looked at him.

“The car won't start until...”

“Right, oh right.” He looked at the seat belt awkwardly and then pulled it. It would not come out, he paused and then pulled it correctly, and then fumbled a bit with the connector. It was a bit tight, but he got it all going.

He paused for a bit, breathing deeply as the car slowly pulled out of the parking spot. “The last time I was in the front seat of a car was twenty twenty-three. I drove … Ben back to work.”

She turned the seat. He was confused. The car was still going. She pulled a book out of a large bag and handed it to Lindsay. The boy smiled and began flipping through it. Naomi then pulled out an EM blocker and put it on the dash, connecting one part to the window. It looked like a radar detector with lights. Expensive toy for a casual conversation. He was not certain it was possible to insert a monitoring device into a moving vehicle from another dimension, but if they knew he had returned someone would try it. Perhaps Naomi had learned something.

It had been a while since Oliver had driven in an Earth car, but he was pretty sure the driver's seat should not swivel like an office chair, “Uh, how is?”

“It hasn't been legal for humans to drive since twenty thirty. This isn't my family vehicle, once we get to our destination it will drop us off, and then it will go to get a quick check-up and recharge, and then a new family will get it. Almost no one is taught to drive these days. Cars are being designed differently.”

She decided to address the elephant in the back seat with the elephant shirt under his coveralls. “We take in about twenty-five thousand Terran children a week. It's all we can handle. They're sending the children now. They almost always only send children.”

Oliver was hurt to hear that, “I thought I heard they got a dog into orbit. Is it really that bad?”

“There's a second device. On Mars. We're pretty sure it was Verdant who did it. They have eight years to get a human there too to shut it down.” Naomi explained.

It was his fault. “Do you mind if I...,” he tapped his vest going for the soother.

“Not in front of them please. I know it's the fashion, but I still think of it as a vice, and they know not to touch one until they are eighteen and on their own. Have to get their mouths straight first.”

Earth had changed since he left. Smoking, vaping, recreational marijuana, and alcohol were in free-fall. Adult men and women turned to other forms of oral stress relief to take the edge off.

Even the two children in the back had it different. They had both 'visited the tooth fairy' and had signed the promise that they would not put a pacifier in their mouth until they had given up their wisdom teeth, their most valuable and precious teeth every fairy wants. The tooth fairy explained she was making 'an investment' in the children's mouths. If their teeth get too damaged, they will be in debt to her forever and need to pay through the nose as adults when they went to the dentist. It was dumb, but since they met the tooth fairy at the bank located in the same office park as their dentist, they used their new ten-dollar bills to open their first savings account.

Oliver tried to turn his seat as well, but it would not budge. Naomi's chair was practically an office chair, but his would not do anything. He had to turn his body uncomfortably, so he could see what she had handed the boy. It was a math workbook; he was intensely working on some problem with his tiny pencil. The boy lowered the page he was working on enough that Oliver caught a glimpse of a word from the title. “Cosecants”

“Is the 'Flynn effect', still accelerating?” He asked trying to be casual.

“Almost all children drink milk these days. Schools are different, but it’s still taking a while for best practices to filter through. Plus, the adults are starting to drink some too, even knowing the risks. I've only started weaning Jackson off of it so he can work on potty training.” Naomi replied, Jackson had fallen asleep the moment the car had moved.

“And Lindsay?” Oliver inquired.

“If he wants to push himself, he's entitled. He seems to know what's at stake but won't talk about it. He tries to minimize wasted time for fun and games if he can avoid it.” Naomi answered with a sad distant look.

“Your grand... his parents are OK with that?” Oliver stumbled a bit in asking it.

Naomi defended it, “It's just a year for them. Which is still hard, but it's like boarding school. Grace got me in touch with some people who came up with a real education plan.”

“But he's going to return and they'll have missed it all.”

“No.” She winced. She almost had told him the plan after the plan but pivoted. “He'll still have had it with me, that's all that matters.”

He looked out the window to the side. He wanted to suck his soother. “You're right, there is always time to have more childhood later.”

Oliver decided to ask, it was what they were telling the Amazons to ask littles, might as well ask the boy as well. “Lindsay, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Lindsay put the book aside, looking at it in the car was not productive anyways, “Is that a serious question?”

“It's OK to say you don't know. I wanted to drive a garbage truck at your age,” Oliver joked with some self-deprecation.

“I'm gonna be level with you Mr. Oliver, since you're new and I don't like you. Terra is counting on me. I am going to build a rocket that will take us to Mars. I don't have my orbital window charts in front of me based on my arrival date back, but we have less than nine years back home, and we have to build and launch it there, so we don't get a lot of chances to build it if things don't go right.” Lindsay was articulate for a kindergartner.

Oliver looked at Naomi, “Why not just launch it from Earth and Dee-shift over from our Mars?” He had just done what the bigs on Amazon do when a little makes a good point, ignore him and talk to his parent. He made a quick apology and focused back on the young man.

Lindsay was used to it, “Basic multiverse physics one Oh one, you need to have a reference for the three-dimensional portion of the nine-dimensional coordinates. We don't have that for Terra's Mars. We might try coordinates blind if we're desperate, but those are one-way trips.”

Oliver tried to give him some hope, “What if there's a portal on Mars already?”

It was not a complete waste of time, just likely it would be. Every test run to Mars from Earth would be two to four months lost back home. Lindsay humored him though, “Rifts only travel along energy gradients, they uh 'fall' or something, you walk into one you're going to end up somewhere down below. I can see it in my head, but the words are hard.”

Oliver knew what he was talking about. The council worlds were not just at the top they were directionally 'top' as well. A world like Amazonia was near the bottom in terms of energy to travel to, so if you walked into a rift on Earth you would...

Wait a second. That could not be right. Human sized “Bermuda Triangles” appear about once a day for a dimension like Earth. That would mean people were falling into the diaper dimension all the time.

Kid was smart. Oliver could see why they sent him. There was a trope in young adult books and movies. The fate of the world depended on the children. And usually, they would get some magical last-minute fix, or through the power of imagination just care bear hug to a solution. Or even if they have some skill, the movie will assume they also have the emotional balance to perform at the level required to succeed to save the planet.

If the fate of the world depended upon children actually doing something, it would go like this – children are good at learning and can be taught to develop a skill that the world needs. You would not send them to wave a sign or even give a speech at the UN. If the fate of the world actually depended on them, there would be hard questions of what tradeoffs you were prepared to make so the children could save the world. Terra had decided a generation of rocket scientists was worth that trade. Oliver pondered what other dark decisions would also be made.

Was Lindsay even the first child that had been conceived by Naomi's grandchildren?

Could they have tried once, done a screening, and then tried again?

Where mating pairs being chosen with intentional direction, like some kind of global eugenics program?

Could they have intentionally engineered certain personalities and conditions into the boy, like Oliver had seen earlier when he was walking with patterns. Make it so it would be a little easier to stay focused on math for hours, even if it meant he would have a bit more difficulty reading faces or emotions?

The boy needed glasses, unlike his blood relatives here. There were well-understood genetic overlaps between that disability and intelligence. No one knew the direction, just the link. Would they have intentionally damaged the eyes just to increase his chances?

He wondered what Earth was doing with the ones who would not be able to cut it with intense training and the years away from their parents. Just send them back?

“You know, Apollo was a team effort. It cost a hundred billion dollars and employed a hundred thousand people working across all the industries. It wasn't just von Braun doing everything. It's OK if you want to do logistics. I'm sure the astronauts want to get paid and be able to schedule vacation, they're going to need regular people for that too. Or become a dentist, what if someone gets a cavity?” Oliver tried to encourage the boy; he could grow up to be whatever he wanted still.

Lindsay was quiet in his response, focusing on his paper, “The girls need something to do too.”

There are plenty of smart women. Every woman Oliver worked with was more intelligent than him, but there would be ten Lindsays for every one Lindsey. The boys could tough through the long slog at “boarding school”. Terra would not be sending the girls until it became clear in the final days that they were not going to make it to Mars. Plus, they wanted astronauts, not just engineers. Expendable ones. Space is dangerous, but it gets a lot more dangerous when you have to move fast and break things.

Naomi was about to unload, but Oliver shook his head. He knew a lot of boys at this age, at least mentally, and sometimes they needed the push. They had to believe they were better than girls and they had to believe they were doing it for the girls. This was life or death for Terrans. The Titanic had hit an iceberg. The girls would need to let the boys play with their toy rockets if everyone wanted to get out of this alive.

Not that it would be easy for the ladies either, growing up without the boys, only to have them appear two years later with a couple decades of experience. The girls were supposed to be more mature. He was not sure how dating was going to work for anyone in the next couple generations.

Oliver reached into his pocket and pulled out a slide rule, he turned to Lindsay and handed him it, “This is a slide rule,” he decided to skip the part about using it to drop a thermonuclear bomb on Terra. “This is the kind of thing Earthlings used the first time they went to the moon. I heard the computers are still having issues on Terra, well, batteries are not needed on this one.” The Nitz had stolen many of the fabs as part of their conquest of the planet.

Lindsay had no idea what this was. It looked like a ruler attached to another ruler. But it was a toy, and he did not even know he had wanted this toy, because he did not realize this was an option to ask for.

“Thank... thank you. I'll use my screen time later to see how it works.” Lindsay held the slide ruler like a gifted sword.

He pointed to the sleeping boy next to Lindsay, “What'd your grandpa do the first time around Lindsay?”

His parents told him to keep it a secret, but Mr. Oliver could not be that bad. He gave him a new toy.

“He was a cosmos-naught.” Lindsay answered with some pride.

“Been a while since I had to hold the two calendars in my head, but if my math is right, he wouldn't have been much older than your Nana is now back in the twenty eighties. Probably had a similar position too I imagine.”

Naomi picked up what he was getting at. Convergence. The same names and places and stories, over and over again, history repeating but with differences each time. The twinning had not stopped with contact in nineteen ninety-two, it had just shifted slightly, like a slide-ruler. Terra was rushing to nineteen sixty-nine, warts and all, and Earth to the end of the twenty first century, sliding into the slot Terra used to occupy. Everything they knew about the physics of the multiverse would need to be rewritten.

Lindsay's eyes spotted the building. The Smithsonian, he quickly spoke up, “Nana we're …. we're driving past it. We need. I thought we were... it's right there.” He hit the window with his fingers.

Naomi looked and saw what he was pointing at. “We're going to The White House this morning. Isn't that just as exciting? The White House. You get to see the original one.”

Oliver quietly corrected her, “Second one.”

That started the squirm.

Lindsay was not having it, he started to whisper to himself. “It'll be OK, it’ll be OK. Four hours is just twenty-four minutes lost, you can make it up. You can make it up.”

Oliver sighed, “Kid, you want to be like von Braun right? How many times do you think Mr. von Braun went to the space museum?”

Another wiggle, Naomi pulled a leg under another leg.

Lindsay did not know. “Uh...”

“Yeah, about zero. How many times do you think he went to The White House?” Oliver quizzed.

Lindsay was unsure about that too.

Oliver answered for him, “Like a hundred probably. It's part of the job. It's not all explosions and math equations, there's a lot more to it if you want to go to space. This part is important too. Now this is your first time, we don't expect you to meet the President and be able to wine and dine with him, this is just a practice run. You're playing tee-ball here, not the major leagues. If we're lucky, maybe you can wave at the assistant secretary of the interior. Now this is the important part.”

Her butt bounced a bit, they were getting closer. The car slowly made its way into temporary parking.

Lindsay leaned in; his booster kept him from getting too far.

“One of the worst things that can happen when you're meeting important politicians in the halls of power, is that you will accidentally lose control. Just get all excited over the silliest things. You can try and keep your composure and the second some politician says, 'How about we hold this meeting in the Red room', boom you just lose yourself to history. It's pure excite-a-billies. That's why we have to get used to going, to know what it feels like. No matter how unimportant some picture or some room or some anecdote the tour guide gives you, you need to get all of your excite-a-billies out. So even if it doesn't seem like it's exciting now, you gotta pretend it is, so you know how to handle it when it's not a practice run.”

Naomi lost control. She lost her composure. She let go of her excite-a-billies. She had failed at the practice run earlier.

The car found a spot in temporary parking a few blocks from The White House. He had seen the growing spot and he thought he could smell it. Oliver knew what to do. He told the boys to 'wait here’ and got out of the car. Naomi had started to pop out of her seat, but he stopped her.

“Be a big girl and wait for daddy to get you out.” He came to her side of the door and opened it. A large wet spot had formed on her crotch, darkening the gray fabric. She had dressed down today and was wearing gray sweatpants. They hardly soaked anything in and when he unbuckled her and took her out, there was a pool of liquid where she had been sitting. Oliver held her hand, reached over and grabbed the bag, and went to the back of the minivan, opening the back hatch. There was plenty of space back here. He laid down a cover he found in the bag and let her hop on it.

He whispered as she sat herself down. “Naomi, you went potty this morning, right? When the boys went?”

“Yes,” her reply was soft.

“Did you... relieve yourself?” Oliver talked down to her.

Naomi’s response was vacant, embarrassed, “I don't remember.”

Oliver understood. He had seen this before. A walking bomb. You know you went into the restroom; you know you sat down; you know you flushed. Nothing had happened. You had held it in. Your own potty training was used against you.

Oliver pulled at her wet pants and took them off over her shoes. He looked in the bag and saw diapers for the boys, wipes, cream, books and toys, a small snack, a folded professional long skirt, and Kroger brand adult diapers. He smiled. She must have known this could happen. Some part of her was still there. He balled up the soiled pants and threw them under the van.

“Don't worry, I'm going to get this all fixed. Naomi, do you like daddy's funny glasses?” Oliver kept a jocular mood for the change.

“No.”

“Well, I need you to be a big girl for me and wear them while I get you good to go. No matter what you keep these on your face. OK. No fidgeting, no moving your head. Keep these exactly on your face.”

He took off the glasses and swiped along the top of the rim. He tapped the side metal a few times and then put the pair on her face. She looked ridiculous wearing men's glasses that were slightly too big. The lens made a display that gave him a countdown.

He took a moment to pull off her shoes and then socks and pulled out what he needed from the bag. He kept looking at her face to avoid looking at his colleague's parts down below. He had done this enough with Telemachus and Collins.

He held up the adult garment, “Not exactly the funnest pair you could have gotten. I think it's important not to skimp on this Naomi. Promise me you'll get yourself something nice next time?” The garment was practically underwear, something a grandmother would wear.

“Yes Daddy.”

“This is kind of like the NOW movie. Did you ever see it? The new one, the live action one?”

“Uh”

“Naomi is played by this cute little in-betweener Indian lady. Um, the dot India not the tomahawk. Except Amazonia doesn't have India, I think she's from Honshu or something. And the littles are kind of the Native Americans. Even though we're the colonizers.” He was rambling. He did that to fill the space when it was awkward.

“They changed the ending though. Oliver is supposed to be the big daddy at the end, but this time around they both get regressed, which makes no sense. Anyway, he's played by an actual little though, so I kind of understood they were keeping it safe with the parents. It's not appropriate to imply a little could be a daddy.” Oliver was just filling for time.

“Yes daddy...”

“You should see the director's cut with the original end...”

FLASH. A big, blue, white flash from his glasses into her face. He had closed his eyes, but she would be blind for a few seconds. He had not even done that bad of a job down below. He had even gotten her skirt on her before the flash went off.

“FUCKSTICKS! I can't see anything!” Naomi began moving her head back and forth. Oliver quickly grabbed his glasses back. He actually needed them for seeing things these days.

The two boys giggled and whispered, “fucksticks. Fucksticks. Fucksticks.” Naomi knew her boys were being naughty. On instinct she turned and said, “No more potty mouth.” With that her vision started to return, she looked through the minivan windows and saw the Washington Monument in the distance.

“Why are we in Dee Cee?” She turned her head and saw Oliver. “Oliver? Oliver! What are you doing back on Earth?”

“Hey... yeah, good to see you again Naomi. We're on an adventure here. We have about ninety minutes until the satellite makes another pass, just enough time for an after school special.” He pointed towards the sky when he mentioned the satellite.

Her feet were barefoot, but her shoes and socks were next to her. Nothing made sense. Even her underwear felt a bit snugger.

“Did it work? Are you back to one?” Oliver looked good for fifty-one. No gray. His hair was even blond in a few areas. He was getting sun and exercise. The suit and tie gave an aura of professionalism on a planet where a Star Wars shirt counted as business casual.

“I peed myself.” No that was not the important thing she meant to say, “Why are you on Earth?”

“Grace contacted me.”

“What'd you do?” She looked at herself and looked at Oliver's glasses.

“These are a little thing we whipped up. Unregression glasses. Rips out the commands directly from your brain, like taking away all the bad thoughts. Similar mind wiping tech the bigs use to make people forget their alphabet.” He clicked a few times on the glasses and read a display. “A bit imprecise still. I hope you don't need any memories from band camp.”

Band camp? He was fucking with her. Like a joke. She had never gone to band camp.

“That seems like extremely dangerous technology, and I would have appreciated knowing the risks before having it used on me.” She was not an intern; you cannot just use off-planet tech on people like this.

Oliver was dismissive, “Nah it's fine, it's kind of like neuralink, it can save the memories, I can just put them back. We use these all the time on deep cover operatives.”

“Why are you on Earth?” Naomi got to the point.

“We're going to kidnap the President.” Oliver said without too much excitement, like it was an everyday occurrence.

She started putting her shoes and socks back on and went to get the children out of the car. Oliver began to go over the details.

It was a plan only a six-year-old could come up with. The other two six-year-old boys thought this was the coolest thing they had ever heard.

“It goes like this, we go on a tour of The White House, but once we get halfway through, I open up a portal to 'Pee Four eMm-Three Two Eight', the dimension where The White House is haunted by ghosts. Then we just have to dodge the vampires and the mummies, get to the oval office, and use your portal to get back to Earth. We grab the President and zip on back here.”

“So, your plan is to start in The White House, go through a haunted version of the White House, grab the President, dodge the vampires, and then return to The White House here?”

“Portal in portal out, Umphf-bampf-umphf.” Oliver even added an annoying smirk. That meme had to be thirty years old.

She knew what he was referring to. Just how much early twenty-first century media had Oliver consumed? All of it? The children were too small to understand what teleport in, bamfpf, and teleport out meant, but she was still unhappy he was casually making an innuendo in front of them. For one of the few adults with potty training left on the planet, he was somehow also the most immature.

“Just get your portal gun charged up, this plan is fool proof.” Oliver finished.

“Oliver,” He was now doing that thing where he ignored the adult.

Lindsay was spinning around in circles slowly while looking at his feet. Jackson was excited. His jacket was only half on, and he made a jump before addressing her. “Mom this plan is perfect. It has vampires and mummies. Lindsay and I can run a distraction and you two can save everyone from mandatory nap time.”

“See, he gets it. Jackson, how good are you at throwing up on command? We turn the red room into the green room...” Oliver was perfectly willing to include children in their daring plan to kidnap the President.

“Oliver,” It was going in one ear and out the other.

Oliver relented, “OK fine.”

“Why are you here? You're on a permanent deep cover mission to Blefuscu, you can't come back to Earth. We only let you come back five years ago because the ceremony would have been awkward without you.” Naomi reminded him. Oliver was not exactly exiled, but he was not exactly welcome on Earth either.

“Grace contacted me.” Oliver started.

“What's going on?”

“The frowny faces are back.” Oliver said simply, as if that was an explanation.

Naomi frowned; she did not understand.

“Grace regressed her parents into littles about twenty years ago and has been monitoring their performance in a log. She likes to pretend she's doing science. She noticed a pattern returning out of nowhere and contacted me for advice to see if re-regression was a thing. I had to walk her through the science of little psychology. There are developmental plateaus, and those are pretty fixed. Anyway, long story short, I said while biological factors can happen all the time, if you're seeing multiple littles regressing at once, that's likely a Tee Vee show or mass hypnosis.” Oliver explained.

She turned her head back and forth as if to shake something out slowly. When did this start? Months ago? Years ago? The planet was lousy with prolonged adolescence and paternalism. Was this an attack from the Amazons? Was it revenge for smuggling weapons to one side of the conflict?

“However genius your plan is, there's one flaw.” Naomi tried not to let him down too much.

He did not believe her; all his plans were perfect.

“I don't have a portal gun.” Naomi gave him the letdown.

“Uh, what? This is standard issue for I.E.D.R, we all should have one.” He was still pronouncing it eye-dar. Eee-deer was the preferred name these days.

“I'm the director. I haven't done field work in twelve years.”

No! That would make her. “You're my boss?”

“Nope, your division is under Scott Lucas now. You remember Scott, right?”

Summer of twenty seventeen, one of the worst interns they ever had. Oliver always thought he would amount to nothing.

“Oh yeah. Didn't he once say dodo counted as vegan because it was extinct?” He ended up getting some plant allergy from the thing, could not eat green vegetables anymore, and went into keto. His internship in the food tasting department did not last much longer after that. Oliver always assumed he was making something up and just wanted an excuse to get out.

Naomi was already dialing on her phone. “Well, I liked your plan, right out of the action movie version of our story, but this is how grownups solve problems. By calling people on the phone and holding meetings and discussions.”

Oliver had not called anyone up on a phone in fifteen years. He probably could not even remember how to do it. Frankly, the idea of ordering a pizza by phone scared him now.

“Hey Scott, it's Naomi. It's a pleasure. Yes. I'm in Dee Cee. Oh, you know? We're about to go to The White House.”

“Oh, that's fantastic you're in the area and can drop in. Think you can set up an emergency meeting? One of your agents just popped up in town.”

“Mr. Swift-Young”

“He wants to kidnap the President.” It was not said sarcastically, or as a joke, it was more like the tone given when tattling.

“Ha. Yeah. He has vital information he wanted to deliver in person. He wants to save the world from mandatory nap times.”

The grownups were back. This was not fair.

“I'll make sure he goes in the front door,” Naomi closed the conversation politely.

She hung up and turned to him, “You have an eight o'clock meeting with your boss, Mr. Lucas. He's the assistant director of interdimensional intelligence now. Be nice because you have a review coming up.” Naomi reached over and straightened his collar and tie. He looked a bit sloppy. Oliver was frowning from the turn of events. Performance review? What are they going to do, fire him?

Naomi explained how actual spy stuff worked, “You'll give a briefing, if he likes what you say, he'll take a summary to the intelligence group, and if they like what you say, they'll add an addendum to the presidential briefing, and if he likes what you say you'll get to save the world. Then we'll meet up at lunch, please let me know if we're going to be stuck as forever babies.”

The future of Earth depended upon Oliver giving a presentation at a meeting, and he had not prepared a power point.

* * *

Oliver had to walk the other side of the White House to get to the business entrance. On the one hand he was technically closer to the Oval Office, which was his end goal, but on the other hand he had no idea what he was getting into. He started programming a simple slide deck on his glasses. It was four pictures he just happened to have inside the glass's memory. Typing in any text at all was a pain, but he managed something that would work. He had no means of transferring the data to an Earth computer, or broadcasting it, but maybe they could practice sharing.

His Earth government issued IDs were expired, but his Libertalia one was new. It still said his mental age was six, which the guards found to be hilarious. They were going to hold him as the 'real' ID was expired, but he found his old social security card in his wallet. The one he had been given near his birth. It had no photo, just a stamp and his Earth name. Despite the protests on the back of the card, it counted as an official form of ID, which meant the other three documents could be used to verify it. They let him into the lobby without much fuss after that.

He had to wait another thirty minutes for his new boss to arrive. Oliver had out dressed him, along with most of the planet. Scott looked old now, he had put on some weight, but it was distributed fairly. He wore a white buttoned shirt, khakis, and a red tie. He had a backpack as well, which based on the busy people around, was the style of the time. Both shoulders were carrying the pack, black and red. If you put him on a bike and he could travel door to door talking about another testament. Scott had a fast pace as he entered, and pointed at Oliver as he went by.

“Follow. Now!” Oliver snapped up and quickly went behind him.

“Listen, you've ruined my entire fucking morning with this stunt. You know...” He stopped as they approached an elevator and pushed his finger directly into Oliver's personal space. “You know we have a fucking building right. Why the fuck are we meeting here?”

Oliver breathed in, and then breathed out, with calm he addressed the issue, “I understand that language is not beneath you, but can we practice being above it for the remainder of our time together?”

The elevator dinged as Scott crunched his face. He had just come in here trying to control the entire pace of the conversation, to be the one in charge, and Oliver had with a soft gesture shut him down. The past few weeks had been like this for him, trying to hold onto authority and cool and power, and feeling it constantly slip away, and now an adult had just shown up and treated him like a child. The same child he used to be when he was politely requested to not return to I.E.D.R.

They stepped into the elevator, and Scott regained his cool. “I'm sorry Oliver, why are you here? Why are we here? You're supposed to be a thousand dimensions away.”

“I'm here because I have information vital to the future of Earth. We're here because I needed a spot, I know would be secure enough for us to have a conversation, while minimizing the layers of overhead between our discussion and action, as time is of the essence. You're here because I only found out you were my boss an hour ago, and I knew that if I did something extra silly the powers that be would find a way to get my boss to me, so I could get him the information, so he could get it to the President.”

Scott was pissed, “You intentionally created a fu... fiasco because you couldn't be as.. bothered to read an org chart.”

“Look I have no idea whether you're cool or not, if I walk into your office and dump this on you, there's a chance you bury it. I dump it on you here, your boss already knows about this meeting and will expect a report. When you go to him and recommend a medal for me ...”

“Don't be premature” Hmm pre-mature, good one from the guy who needed to wear protection to bed last night.

The elevator unloaded them into an ugly sub level with dimming fluorescent lights and white paint, a sharp contrast to the bright and inviting entry floor. They did not need to go far until Scott directed him into a small room. It was unimpressive in size and appearance, and the walls kept having a clang from old pipes kicking air conditioning through the building. The lighting hurt to be under and had a bad old hum. The office chairs were well used, and not every space around the thin meeting table had one.

“Perfect” Oliver stated as if excited by the room. He was trying to cover up his growing claustrophobia. Why did littles have to make everything so confined? He found a chair at the far end of the table and Scott sat down across from him.

“I'll start by saying, thank you for all the support you continue to give my mission. I like that I get birthday cards still, that's actually hard to track over there,” Oliver began earnestly.

“As soon as your idiotic presentation is over, I'm going to do your performance review. You've missed fifteen of them. Then I'm going to fire you.” There he was back in control. Oliver was no longer his old boss, and superior. He was no longer the war hero. He was the giant black hole of expenses that was dragging his entire department down. Scott flipped open the backpack and started taking out several decades of Oliver's related employee paperwork. It was a government job, so of course the paperwork was kept in manila folders on actual paper.

“Well, that's fair. I made a slide show on my glasses. You'll have to wear them.” Oliver took them off and handed them to Scott, who eyed the glasses with caution. Scott slowly pulled them up to his face and put them on. The vision around the edges went dark, and he saw a simple whiteboard and text.

'Project Gundam'. No.

“As you know there is an ongoing war between Yamatoa and Freewind. We're entering the phase of the war where the sides are going all in on their super weapons.”

This was actually good enough to pull a stunt like this. 100,000 worlds and one of them, far out of distribution, had made giant mechanized robots, with laser guns and plasma swords. If this could be done, Earth had to have this, no matter the cost. Oliver would get a medal if he brought back a Gundam.

“Now don't get your hopes up.” Oliver warned.

OK, maybe not like one of the modern Gundams, maybe it's more like the originals? That would still be cool. Even a zaku or a robotech would be fine.

“It's actually a mispronunciation of the project name. One of the risks of playing the game of telephone with littles.” Oliver flipped the slide to the next one with a hand gesture. Scott noticed a ca'thunk and a click, the Gundam slide actually seemed to fall down, then up and away as a new picture shifted in. There was a small flash of light as the glasses shifted. It was a bit blurry but came into focus quickly. The image that emerged was fairly low quality, not quite black and white but not a ton of color depth either. It was also a night picture.

It depicted three large structures, surrounded by lights. They had to be fifteen or twenty miles away. Thin metal buildings in the round shape of a grain silo. Scott wondered to himself if these buildings were rockets.

“We received notice from our network that the Yams had set up a launch facility near the port of Sing-a-Ling, which is pretty close to the equator. We got a crack team out there to stop it. We mostly succeeded.”

Flash of white, cathunk, new image. It was of similar low quality as the second but depicted one of the rockets blowing up on the ground.

“If you can see in the background there's that streak there. That's the one that got away. We made it a priority to shoot it down anyway we could. We were tracking it go into orbit and then... poof.”

“Poof? Like a cloaking device? Stealth?” Scott tried to ask.

“Space doesn't allow for stealth. Space is the low ground. You can't hide a toaster this side of Jupiter in space. No, we just assumed it blew up, but we never found any signs of debris.”

Cathunk, next picture, a blueprint, couple solar panel arms on the sides of a big, weird bell shape. “It's Amazonian regression tech. Top of the line, using some stuff that even mainstream psychology is unaware of. The fact it can get a signal through an atmosphere at all is impressive. Uses some radiation to disrupt human mental processes and target specific areas of the brain for atrophy or growth.”

Flash, white, big black “End of presentation.”

Scott was unsure what to say as the room came back to him through the glasses. Everything had a bit of an extra color to it. Like a bit more blue to the world. “Uh... OK so who cares?”

“Verdant has been funneling resources into the conflict against council law.” Oliver said flatly.

Scott did not want to hear this, “How do you know that?”

“The Amazons are great scientists and researchers, but they can't launch a rocket into space farther than they can throw it. That rocket design is from Verdant.” Oliver was certain.

“Well, we can't just bring this to the council, we're also helping the other side of the conflict. Just as illegally. Quite frankly I don't see the big deal.” Scott dismissed the new discovery. This was no Gundam.

“A yoU-eFf-Ooh entered Earth's low orbit at the moment we lost track of it on our side.”

Scott gave a rebuttal, “Lots of amateur rocketeers these days, we don't even bother tracking all that stuff.”

Oliver tied the two together, “It's our missing satellite. Verdant’s must have given the rockets to the 'zon's and in exchange they built an extra satellite to attack us.”

“You know the mandatory naps are popular right?” That is what he meant when he asked what's the big deal.

Oliver shook his head but said nothing.

“What's so wrong with this? This is just the end result of a long battle with adulthood for us millennials. We were the last children of the twentieth century, and the first adults of this one, and we spent the whole time worrying about 'adulting' that we missed the important stuff. Why not just have a midlife crisis, jump in a ball pit, talk about how cool narwhals are, take productivity naps, drink milkshakes for breakfast, and watch movies based on comic books instead of classic plays and literature. This is our millennium. We get to decide what it means to be an adult now, and maybe this is better.”

One of those guys. Never challenge yourself, and act like you will be cute forever. Scott was a little who had bought into the narrative they had never been good enough to grow up and never would. They were eager to just go back into their cocoon. Oliver just nodded.

“Well, that's settled, time for your review. Let's make this quick so I can get you fired and go back to doing important stuff.” The director opened a manila envelope.

“So, the first thing on the agenda is failure to schedule a meeting in proper location or time. That's in the handbook, that's one demerit, we need to both be tracking these, there are union rules.”

“There's a union?”

“Second is issuing a threat to kidnap the President,” Scott gave that as much importance in his tone as failing to schedule a meeting properly.

Oliver was ready, “That was just to get Naomi to snap out of it and get me back into proper channels. The plan literally involved vampires and werewolves.”

“Normally yes; however, part of the reason I was late this morning is I double checked something with the analysts. It turns out Pee four eMm three hundred twenty-eight is a world where Dee Cee was burned in the civil war, and the capital moved to Kansas City or wherever. The important thing is that some crazy old guy bought the land where the original White House was located and built a one-to-one replica. He then turned it into a haunted mansion. Apparently, starting about a month ago, the whole exhibit has been closed for renovation, and won't reopen until Halloween.”

Oliver smiled, “Well I wouldn't take children to fight real vampires.”

“Oh, and the stupid trick with two portal guns where you loop back to the home dimension. There's apparently some pretty weird things that happen when two portals are that close together. Someone trying to go in one portal will pop out the other. Meanwhile you would be safe to hit your standard issue emergency dimension shift teleport and land back in California at I.E.D.R, then bounce who knows where. What I just described, that's classified research, above your access level.” Scott’s tone was more critical for that error than the threat of kidnapping or the improper meeting location.

“Maybe I was the one who discovered it,” Oliver smiled, he had done a lot of testing at I.E.D.R back in the day.

“The way I see it, Amazonia or whatever it's called, is a great big waste of time and resources. This attack is just proof of it. Yes, we know the Verdant’s have been using it as a dumping ground for developing illegal tech.” Scott was more prepared than Oliver had expected.

“It's our sphere of influence. They can't have it. Zemlya found them.” Oliver rebutted; he was losing control here.

“Yeah well, we ain't exactly eager to get Amazon up as a world to join the greater human race. They're a bunch of freaks. The whole planet. What has our interference gotten us? Quite frankly this attack is blowback for the stuff you've been pulling. Your whole mission there is one giant black hole, we've sent all sorts of important Earth tech – planes, stealth, missiles, guns, and nothing to show for it.”

He continued “The planet is in a huge war and there's no pathway for any side to win. Who cares who wins anyways? It's a bunch of dwarfs fighting for the right to decide when they get to take their bedtime versus a bunch of giants on what color diaper the babies get to wear. We should cut our losses. We should ask the Verdant’s to lockout the whole damn dimension like they did with the Terrans. Just retard their planet down to a fraction of normal speed and be done with them.”

This was Oliver's life now, he was not going to have someone say it was unimportant, and he absolutely about to let Scott know what a real dress down was. Instead, the red laser glow from the glasses had just indicated it had finished adjusting for the specific physiology of Scott's brain. Oliver calmed down, and spoke to him in a reassuring tone, “I know you're not yourself right now, so I want to say, I forgive you for not having the right perspective.”

His boss was not going to put up with any more belittling. He opened his mouth to unload when the glasses flashed one more time.

“I think we'll go to ten on this one.”