diaper dimension The Age of the Amazons (Chapter 4 Update)

[littleTomás]

So I got this idea today while reading one of @BabySofia stories and couldn't get it out of my head. Here's the first chapter and I didn't take much time to edit it, so I apologize in advance for any errors. I'm not sure when I'll finish this because I'd kinda like to lay "The Portal in the Basement" to rest before jumping head into something new. Anyways, without further ado, here's what I did instead of studying for my Thermodynamics final exam!

 

The Age of the Amazons

By: Little Tomás

Chapter 1

               “Please state your name and position for the record”

               “Dr. Ava Armstead, Director of Recourse Allocation at the National Institute for Scientific Progress,” I said calmly.

               “Dr. Armstead, this hearing is on the record and I’m required to inform you that if you lie while testifying here today you will be charged with perjury, which is a felony. You do have the right to remain silent. I would also like to remind you that this is a legislative body, not a judicial one, but we will turn over everything we find today to the Attorney General’s office. Regardless, you do have the right to have an attorney present and if you cannot afford one the state will provide one. Each member of the committee will have 20 minutes to question you and time will be kept by myself. Order shall be determined by seniority. Do you have any further questions about these proceedings before we begin?”

               “No, I understand my rights and Mr. Alvi and Ms. Kahn, seated to my left and right, are my legal counsel.”

               “Very well then. The chair recognizes the senior member of this honerable committee. Senator Anthony, you have 20 minutes.”

                “I thank the chair. My first question for you is when was it first brought to your attention that there was a fertility disorder in our genome?”

               Senator Anthony’s green eyes were stone cold as he stared down from his seat at Dr. Armstead who was sitting at a small table, her lawyers seated on each side like bodyguards facing an army in the middle of the arc of 12 senators who composed the Sadayas Senate Oversight Committee. There was the faint, but ever present click of the reporters’ cameras, and the low electric hum of the TV cameras and audio recorders: the hunting call of a pack of wolves. There were few spectators in the packed chamber due to the overwhelming number of reports. There was even a tiny camera in the gallery of room being operated by little from the BBC. This was interdimensional news now.

               Fuck this being a legislative proceeding. This was a court of public opinion. There was going to be no due process. The people wanted to blame someone and the President had more or less managed to side-step the whole crisis leveraging populist policies and the “mob mentality” of their supporters to become the leader of the witch hunt, instead of the first one on the gallows. Who to blame? That was simple. The same people they’d been blaming since they first set foot on the campaign trail: the corrupt politicians, technocrats, bureaucracy, scientists, academics, etc. Truth was the President also had their own special interests, everyone in politics does (heavens knows the salaries on paper aren’t why anyone runs for office), just different ones than most politicians. The President had started a fucking war because of what they’d made me do, but what choice did I have? The President had the power to ruin my life if I didn’t keep my head down and mouth shut. All those nice weekends on the tropical beaches of their private islands as well as the checks each month to my musician brother in addition to introductions to all the heavy-hitters in the industry were not signs of friendship, but payment for doing their dirty work. “It’s just money, this is what the people want,” they’d say. I knew it was bullshit, but hey, the money was nice and the sex was fantastic. Yeah, I was that ladder-climbing hore, but you can’t get ahead in a male-dominated industry in this conservative country any other way. And emigration is strictly limited to the filthy rich, so that wasn’t an option. I did what I had to do and my brother is now a fucking billionaire because of it. I’m also rich, but I won’t be by the close of business. I know I won’t be the only head to roll, but I’ll be the first. The President and their inner circle set a nuclear time bomb on this ship and rode away on a fucking helicopter. Leaving behind me, and everyone else in their administration, to die. But hey, they got what they wanted and so did I. I wanted to be the top scientist in the world and I was. Regardless of what was about to happen, I’d make the same decision a thousand times over because I had something that no one else—not even my lawyers—knew about. The metaphorical anti-aircraft gun. Yeah, I was going to die in the nuclear bomb on this ship I’d been abandoned on, but not before I shot down the President and their inner circle from their fucking helicopter.

               “Over 30 years ago. I was working as a research assistant at the University of Sadayas City and was a doctoral candidate in Organic Chemistry,” I said calmly. Remember: look them in the eye, show no weakness, answer succinctly and directly. Never give them any reason to think you’re telling them anything, but the whole truth. Never consult your lawyers in the chamber and answer every question yourself. Breathe easy.

               “And what did you do with that information?”

               “I published it in the National Journal of Organic Chemistry. It was the cover story in the Winter ’85 edition, DOI: 10.1021 if you care to read it.”

               “I’ll pass on reading it Dr. Armstead, science has never been my subject of choice. I’ll trust the editors that your research was solid, correct?”

               “Let me tell you something about the scientific community of this country. A woman’s work doesn’t get published if it’s solid, it only gets published if it’s pristine, groundbreaking, and worth winning a Nobel Prize. So yes, my research was solid and indisputable.”

               “Did it ever cross you mind to make this research known more widely? Say tell the media or give public presentations on it? You know, explaining things in a way that people can, actually understand?”

               His condescending tone-of-voice was aggravating and I wanted nothing more than to cut out his slimy tong, but I kept my cool. “I did. I had about two-dozen Newspaper, TV, and radio interviews in the first month after the research had been published and I presented my findings at the National Organic Chemistry Convention in January of ’86. So yes, I did share my research widely. What I found was no secret and was made know widely.”

               “Did you ever even once, think that finding a solution to this problem might be a good idea? I mean it seems like common sense that a talented scientist like you would want nothing more than to solve the problem you discovered.”

               “It did cross my mind, but my dissertation was on changes in DNA structures in response to electrical signals from nano transmitters bonded to enzymes, and upon graduation I was hired by the Biotech firm Preminta. I knew that solving that problem would be something to investigate, but opportunity took me in a different direction and all my research was public information, so anyone who wanted to solve this problem and pick up where I left off had every resource they needed to do so.”

               “You have 5 minutes remaining in your time Senator Anthony.”

               “I thank the chair for that reminder. I guess it’s time I cut right to the chase then and ask you the one question that we all want to know. As Director of Recourse Allocation at the National Institute for Scientific Progress did you refuse to fund projects related to solving the birthrate problem?”

               “Yes, I did. I rejected every single one of those applications that ever landed on my desk, but not very many of them ever made it to my desk because they were rejected by people working bellow me.”

               “So, you’re admitting, under oath, to signing the extinction warrant of our species? Why, what kind of evil person would do such a thing?”

               “Me, I am the evil person who did such a thing. I was under orders from the President to keep littles moving into Sadayas at all costs. A solution to the birthrate would mean the end of the trillion-dollar little industry, an industry that the President was heavily invested in. They paid me and everyone at the National Institute for Scientific Progress fat fees for doing so. I was given monetary and non-monetary benefits for doing so. All the proof of this has been entered into evidence.”

               “So, you are admitting to these crimes? You know that these crimes could land you in prison for the rest of your life?”

               “I know that, but I’m not the real bad guy here. All the opposition party members here are after the President, and you’re after the prime minister because you what his job. I’m just a pawn in your game, but let me tell you something you don’t know. Right about now a bullet is going to go through the President’s head. They’ll be shot by a little from a special force strike team that’s been laying low in our dimension for roughly three months. As I’m telling you this every major tech company, top secret military weapons lab, and the National Institute for Scientific Progress is being raided in a joint operation of special force strike teams from various nations in the other dimension. Within a minute we should also be hearing that the Prime Minister was assassinated, so I’d like to congratulate you, Senator Anthony, on the promotion. I suggest we break for an extended recess right about now because I can see your staff members are running in to report the news to the committee members and the reporters are also hearing reports. But, one last thing before well I still have everyone’s attention: If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I’d make the same set of decisions a thousand times. I yield my time to the committee and thank them for their cooperation.”

               The room erupted into chaos with media members giving live reports and inadvertently blocking the exits. The senators rushed to get out of the room to anywhere where they could talk on the phone in peace. I had no problem exiting the room with 8 security guards escorting me. Ah, the perks of being one of the most hated people in the nation. I’d created this shitstorm and was loving every moment of it. The protesters outside were infuriated at the news of the President’s assassination and a lovely riot was about to break out. I was going to be escorted to an armored SUV, but passed up the opportunity and forced my security team to drive me back home in my own car. The federal vehicles were so nice they were uncomfortable. The back seats were like sitting on an antique couch: looks nice, but makes your back hurt like a bitch for two hours after you sit up. After I’d piled into my car with 6 security guards, we drove away protesters screaming, waiving signs, and beginning to throw rocks.

               After I’d made it away from the capital building, I requested that we stop at a café so I could get a cup of coffee. My security detail groaned silently, but they work for me, so if I want to get a cup of nice coffee, it’s their job to secure the perimeter. Three of them stayed with the car parked outside and the other three followed me into the café. I have to admit, I was kinda sad about what was about to happen. My security detail had been good sports and put up with my shit—like insisting I get an espresso and a croissant myself from a café every morning and eat my breakfast at an outdoor table at that same café—but this was about my future. People were gonna die so that I could survive, but that’s the way the universe works.

               I sat down at a table outside with my espresso and croissant taking in the nice weather. I was gonna miss this place, but they said the weather in a place called San Diego is even better. Still what you know is always better. I checked my watch, downed my espresso, and then “accidentally” dropped the ceramic espresso cup on the cobblestone street as it shattered. That’s all it took. One glance down from one of my bodyguards and then an armored SUV came flying down the street and 4 gunshots rang out simultaneously. The 3 guards who were at my car dropped dead on the spot as did the one who’d looked down. I was then thrown to the ground behind a table by two remaining bodyguard had flipped over as they returned fire.

               “We’re outnumbered, give me a gun!” I shouted. One of them passed be their sidearm and I immediately put a bullet through each of my remaining two bodyguard’s heads.

               “Get your ass in the car!” One of the littles inside the SUV shouted at me. I ran over to my car, grabbing my go-bag, my sidearm, and an assault rifle from my trunk before hopping into the SUV as the driver floored it to get away from the café where the patrons were trying to make sense of what had just happened.

               “Hello Captain,” I said as I buckled my seatbelt, “I guess you can fit 2 whole squads of folks your size into one of our cars.”

               “Quit the ‘small’ talk before I put a bullet in you. You’re only alive right now because we need you in our dimension to train our scientists. Also, well done at that hearing this morning. Your big mouth was truly a revelation. You did a great job making a lot of people in our world hate you, so congrats: you’re headed to a place where 7 billion of us want to kill you.”

               “Captain Octavia, you may want to watch your mouth before I diaper you and make you my little.”

               “Soldiers, load your guns, take your positions and prepare for forced portal entry,” Captain Octavia such a strong voice that I was even a little scared.

               “Yes Captain!” The 20 little soldiers shouted in unison.

               “Soldiers, what do we fight for?”

               “For the dignity and respect of our species Captain!”

               “And where are we headed soldiers! Where are we going?” Captain Octavia yelled in an even louder voice.

               “To glory or the grave Captain! We fight together and die together!”

               I was impressed by their antics and I have to admit that for the first time in my life, I took a group of littles seriously. These littles were prepared to die together and incredibly well-disciplined. Discipline that would have made any big want that in their little. Only problem was they were loyal to the wrong cause, but that was a small matter. This was about their survival and my survival, so for the time being our interests aligned.

               My brother Brian was driving the car and I was surprised he agreed to this. Unlike me he had a future in this dimension. Even if Sadayas fell to the littles he had the money and global popularity to move to a different country. Yet he was here. Risking his life to protect me and help these littles. I knew I deserved to rot in a jail cell for the rest of my life, but something about the prospect of freedom was so tantalizing. I guess my brother owed me a favor after I set up his life for success, but he probably just loved me more than I loved him. However, I was ok exploiting this relationship because he made that choice, so I’m gonna take that and run with it.

               “Ava, load your fucking assault rifle and make yourself useful. You’re covering the left side with Peirce, Franklin, and Leo. Take out anyone who has an angle on Brian. Your job is to protect your brother. If he goes down, we need you to drive. You’re the only other person here who can drive this car.” Captain Octavia said.

               Caught up in the moment and still with some fear of these littles in my gut from their shouting moments before I responded with a strong, “Yes Captain!”

               “Good to know you’re on my side, now protect your friend Ava. We either all make it out alive, or none of us do.” Captain Octavia said.

               As I loaded my gun and took my position with the muzzle of my rifle poking out through the opening at the top of the partly rolled down bullet-proof window, the heavily guarded portal entrance became visible in the distance. The portal itself was already secured by little soldiers, but there were five squads of Sadayas soldiers fighting to take back the portal and standing between us and safety. As Captain Octavia looked through her binoculars and saw what I could already see I heard her say under her breath, “To glory or the grave.”

[Guilend]

Very interesting. I'm looking forward to more.

[Baby Billy]

I really like the start of this, you put together very fast. Keep up the good work, can't to see what happens.

[BabySofia]

I am very curious where you take this! One thing at the top your wrote perdury, which should have been perjury. 

Looking forward to more! 

[littleTomás]

16 minutes ago, BabySofia said:

I am very curious where you take this! One thing at the top your wrote perdury, which should have been perjury. 

Looking forward to more! 

Fixed!

Glad everyone is enjoying this

[Shotgun Diplomat]

Very intriguing. What happens when an Amazon goes to what is ostensibly a "little" dimension? When humans go through to an "Amazon" one they tend to shrink. Will the opposite occur and have the Amazon be even taller? Struggling to exist in a world not at all sized for them? Oh sweet irony. 

[Baby Billy]

I had the same thought, even if they did grow larger just being over 10 feet tall would be a hardship getting in homes or cars.

[YourFNF]

Interesting. Glad to see some organized resistance. Somebody needs to take the Amazons down a peg.

[LtlGary]

On 4/30/2020 at 6:20 PM, littleTomás said:

weather in a place called San Diego is even better

As someone who lives in San Diego, I while heartedly agree with this. 

Great start so far!

[littleTomás]

20 hours ago, LtlGary said:

As someone who lives in San Diego, I while heartedly agree with this. 

Great start so far!

Thanks! ? One of these years I’m gonna go to San Diego for the West Coast Jungle Gym.

[Sarah Penguin]

[littleTomás]

Here's a short update. Just for the record, the chapters from here on out, all chapters will be told in first-person from a different character's perspective (some characters will narrate multiple chapters). There will be a tag at the beginning of each chapter to clue you into who is telling the story. I hope you enjoy!

 

Chapter 2

Rahul--40 years earlier

                “What’s up with this new ad? We can’t have anyone thinking this is a drug because then it’ll have to get approved by the FDA. This is a dietary supplement. Got it? Sales have been skyrocketing and we don’t want to stop that.”

                “Sorry Rahul, I’ll talk to the marketing team right away and get this sorted out, but they said it did play well with one target demographic,” my secretary Jacob said.

                “Not a problem, I just don’t want to see production get held up by clinical trials and worst of all would be this new protein shake being labeled a controlled substance. What meetings do I have this afternoon?”

                “You have a two-o-clock with the product development and your regular three thirty with marketing.”

                “Good, that’ll give me time to ask them directly what they were thinking with this new ad.”

                “Rahul, remember to eat something before your two-o-clock meeting. You’ve got about thirty minutes. Do you want Chipotle? A bunch of us in the office are putting in an order.”

                “Yeah, that’d be good. Just get me the order I sent out in the Slack last week.”

                “Not a problem. See ya later Rahul.”

                I took a sip of his long cold cup of coffee. Being founder and CEO of a company wasn’t like I thought it would be. In the early days it was fun, but a few years in and I was just making non-stop critical decisions. I did miss the lab and reverse-engineering the formula I’d found in the duffle bag from the portal back in collage. Jack and I needed to have serious self-restraint to not drink all of it as I convinced him I could make the stuff. I still can’t believe that I’d gone and gotten a masters in Chemistry just so I would be able to create the stuff. The project was a labor of love that took over 4 years and wasn’t finished until I was about to graduate with my masters.

The problem with making the formula for mass-market was how to keep the intoxicative properties, amazing taste, and nutritional value of the formula while leaving out the diuretic and laxative effects. Obviously, they couldn’t be like those Lays potato chips that had no fat and tasted great, but cased “anal leakage” when consumed in large amounts. I needed to make sure that the public didn’t think it was harmful and see it as a new drug that people were using. The investors were sold at first taste, so all that needed to happen was to scale up production.

I hadn’t actually fully succeeded at getting rid of all the negative side effects that the formula had without getting rid of the pleasant intoxication it caused. There had been a spike in diaper sales since our product hit the market, and I knew that boxers and wrestlers, as well as ABDL’s, would have wanted the original for their respective reasons. I was planning on brining that up at the meeting with the product team this afternoon because I needed to make sure that we were the leader in the formula market with imported formula hitting the shelves. It’s funny how quick The Bureau was to get formula imports going, but the imported product had slightly hurt business. However, I had a plan in place to tip off some investigative journalists on the negative side effects the imported formula had, so they’d get bad press and people would stop buying their product. It did kinda pain me that it was Daddy Dan who was spearheading the trade effort and how he was hurting my business. Yet, I still did like the guy. Regardless, I had a glorious bowl of chipotle now sitting in front of me to finish before my meeting.

The air in the lab smelled like rubbing alcohol and the room was only white, stainless steel, and glass. Even through the windows looking out on the world at large, the same color scheme was maintained because of the winter snow. Many would have seen the place as bleak, but it was home to me. The lab was where I’d spent most of undergrad and all of grad school. The smell of rubbing alcohol, was the smell of progress and success. I took off his suit jacket and put on a lab coat as I walked in. Normally, a meeting with the CEO would be hold in one of those wood-paneled conference rooms with black leather chairs around a large oval Mahogany table, and a plasma screen monitors at each end of the room. However, this meeting was about product formulation and testing, so I’d requested it be in the lab. Also, I’d never really felt comfortable in those conference rooms. Mabey it was PTSD from all the pitch meetings I’d blown with venture capitalist firms in those early years. Those rooms were just too fancy had required way too much corporate jargon to make me comfortable. On the other hand, I love the language of science, so the lab made me much more comfortable. The lab was where I first tasted success and everything is governed by scientific fact instead of market-share and portfolio diversification. Economics had always flown over my head—despite economist claiming that they are scientists. It always seemed to me like they were just studying why people make such dumb decisions with money as opposed to a fact-based set of fundamental laws. There was no periodic table in economics. No predictable isotopes with known probabilities of abundance or re-producible outcomes in certain reactions.

“Welcome Mr. Rodrigues,” Imani said as she shook my hand and broke my train of thought. “Shall we begin with a blind taste test before discussing specifics?”

“I think that’d be a good idea,” I said as I took a seat on a stainless-steel stool at a stainless-steel lab table.

“We have 4 different samples for you to try today which are laid out in these numbered cups and here’s a glass of water and some crackers for you to cleanse your pallet between tastes.”

I started with the first one and worked my way through the different samples. The first one was too thick for me, the second had an unpleasant aftertaste, the third was heavenly, and the last one was too sweet. I relayed my thoughts to Imani as I finished up the glass of water and the rest of the product team entered the lab for the meeting.

“Our product testers agreed that number 3 was the best. Thankfully for us, that’s our latest formula for the supplement and testing has indicated greatly reduced diuretic and laxative properties over the original formulation. The effects aren’t gone entirely, but they are more than manageable and on par with a double shot of espresso,” Imani said.

“That’s very good. How about we continue to produce the original formulation because there are many that could benefit from such a tasty mind laxative and diuretic?”

“That would be possible under our current production system. So, do we have the go-ahead to move forward with putting this new formulation into production?”

“That you do, Imani.”

“Wonderful! And with that I’ll turn things over to Liam for the next item on the agenda.”

[Little Andrea]

I’m glad to see that this is back.

[littleTomás]

3 hours ago, Little Andrea said:

I’m glad to see that this is back.

Thanks! Me too. It took me awhile to figure out what direction I wanted to take things and I have a very good idea now of where this is headed.

[Sarah Penguin]

[littleTomás]

Here's another update! I love reading everyone's comments so keep sharing your thoughts on the story. A quick note: Liberation Day is the day on which Chapter 1 takes place.

Chapter 3

Capt. Octavia—Liberation Day -5 years

               “The most successful corporations on Earth ever was the Dutch East India Company. That company had an estimated worth of $7.9 Trillion today. Some characteristics of this company were the strength of a military, authorization to operate above the law, no respect for human life, wealthy investors backing them, and a lucrative market to take over. These same characteristics apply to The Bureau which is a Sadayas-founded interdimensional corporation which we estimate has taken over the human trafficking market by a margin of 2 to 1: meaning for every one person who’s trafficked on Earth, two are trafficked to Sadayas. Just as the Dutch East India Company was merciless to their slaves in the pursuit of profit, The Bureau is doing the same: stripping adults of their dignity and forcing them to live a life of slavery as a living baby doll for Amazon women who don’t have children.

The good news is that we suspect their species has a genetic defect that came from a virus which spread in a global pandemic 350 years ago which makes it impossible for some of the population to reproduce. This is the dominate reproductive trait in their genome, so their species is on the path to extinction which gives us an opportunity to take their technology and rescue those who’ve been trafficked there. We have an opportunity to free the enslaved and stop The Bureau from expanding too far. Just as the Dutch East India Company collapsed abruptly, so will The Bureau.

Soldiers, this mission will test you beyond measure. They will try to destroy your mind, body, and spirt. To be degraded so much that you forget who you are and learn helplessness. You will be injected with powerful drugs, hypnotized, and beaten into submission. You will need to carry on through all this hardship and when the appointed day comes, be ready to fight. Some of you will not be fit to fight. You will have a complete breakdown and be unfit to finish the mission. You must be strong beyond strong and know that in every fight you are at a severe disadvantage. Amazons physically outclass you tenfold when you are at your physical peak, but you may grow fat and become uncoordinated while captured. How well will you be able to fight then?

We need soldiers with grit and discipline. The best of the best. Each and every one of you was hand selected for this task force because of your skills, but many of you will fail your training and never make it to the other dimension. If you are not prepared for this mission, now that you know what it is, then go walk out the back door right now. I won’t think anything less of you for it because this must be the most important thing in your entire life for you to succeed. You cannot have any attachment to this world or anything holding you back because that will become your weakness. If you have weakness, they will find it and they will break you. We will purge every weakness from you in this training and many of you will fail in training and not qualify for this unit. If you are ready for this then your training starts tomorrow on the drill field at 0330 and don’t bother wearing any clothes. For the first stage of your training you will be completely naked. No shoes, no weapons. You will learn to fight with only your body because that’s something that you won’t lose until you’re already dead.”

The recuts stood up and left. Out of the pool of 150, I suspect only 40 will make it through: which poses a problem because we probably need 80 for the mission to succeed. Also, I need a final pool that has the right skillset—something that’s not a guarantee. What am I gonna do if I end up with 20 at the end the training? I can’t trust the rebels over there to do the heavy lifting, so do I lower my standard or look for more recruits? I just hope that my calculations are incorrect and more of them can handle the limited amount of sleep they’ll get to prepare them for the 32-hour days over there. Yet these are questions for another day because right now I have to go do more regression training which absolutely sucks because you have to resist feeling amazing, but it is what it is. I just hope that 5 years from now this mission will succeed.

[SGTbaby]

Interesting 

[littleTomás]

19 hours ago, SGTbaby said:

Interesting 

Thanks! Soon you'll get a vivid picture of this training from the perspective of one of the recruits...

[littleTomás]

Here's another quick update. Things have been busy for me of late, but hopefully I'll be back soon with more!

Chapter 4

Rahul

                It’d been two weeks since the product meeting and beginning a rebranding process to differentiate our formula from imported products when I got the strangest phone call ever. It started with Jacob walking into my office saying, “Rahul, someone’s on the line who claims to be from the FBI, but the phone number came through as being from Australia. Sounds pretty fishy to me, but should I put them through? They said they need to talk to you right away and were calling to tell you an agent is on their way over here.”

                “Um yeah, I’ll talk to them, but it seams pretty strange if you ask me.”

                “Ok, I’ll patch them through to your office line.”

                A minute later my phone rang and I picked it up saying, “This is Rahul Rodrigues, CEO of Health Shakes Daily speaking. How may I help you?” In my usual over-the-phone ‘white voice.’

                “Yes, Mr. Rodrigues this is FBI Special Agent Ito and I’m calling to let you know that I’d like to speak with you imminently and am arriving at your office with my partner Agent Anand. If you’re in the middle of a meeting that’s fine with us but we will wait for an opportunity to talk to you today.”

                “Ok, I’m free now, but can I ask for what reason you need to speak to me?”

                “I’d rather not mention that over the phone, but this is a voluntary interview Mr. Rodrigues. However, we could make it non-voluntary, but would rather not take that route.”

                With that I wrapped up the phone conversation and waited for the two well-dressed agents to walk into my office with an air of professionality and authority. I worry that it’s possible they are concerned about my company’s product being a drug, but in that case why wouldn’t the DEA or FDA be talking to me? This whole thing seemed beyond me, and yet I’m at the very center of it. Am I going to be led out of here in handcuffs?

                “Hello Mr. Rodrigues, FBI Special Agent Ito.” Agent Ito said to me as they reached out their hand. It was handshakes and introductions all around as the two agents took a seat across from me and asked me to turn off my phone. They’d already closed the door behind them.

                “Mr. Rodrigues, you’re probably wondering why we’re here today,” Agent Anand said to me in a tone that is probably casual for an agent, but comes across as off-putting. “We’re going to be recording this conversation, so you are on-the-record, but you are not under arrest. We are here today because we think you may have some information that could help us in an active investigation we’re working on. You are not the subject of said investigation so you have nothing to worry about. However, you do have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?”

                “Yes, I do.”

                “And are you waiving your right to have an attorney present here?”

                “I am waiving my right to an attorney present.”

                “Ok, Mr. Rodrigues, what do you know about Dimension 367A, commonly referred to as the Amazon Dimension or Baby Dimension?”

                I realized right away where this interview could go. Unauthorized portals are illegal and that would define what had happened back at North Carolina Institute of Technology. However, at the time there was no law preventing that from being a crime at the time, so I couldn’t be prosecuted for it. Yet, if they found me then they’d probably found Jack, Professor Brown, and Sophia. Which means there’s no telling what they know about me. Also, it was pretty clear that Agent Anand was going to do most of the talking and Agent Ito was just there to play off of whatever Anand was doing. Unless that portal was still active, but there’s no way they could know about it because we built a new device for the authorized portal that opened up.

                “Well, my company synthesized our own healthy dietary supplement protein shake that’s similar to imported ‘little formula’ from Dimension 367A, but has more benefits and fewer side effects.”

                “That’s all well and good, but have you ever been to Dimension 367A?”

                “No, I have never been outside this dimension,” I tried to shrug it off with a chuckle, but it almost certainly came across as nervous and unconvincing.

                “Mr. Rodrigues, let’s just be straightforward with each other here. Clearly you know more then you’re telling us, and we know more than we’re telling you, so why don’t you think really hard about this question and give us an honest answer,” Agent Ito said in contribution to the interview.

                “Mr. Rodrigues, have you ever been to Dimension 367A?” Agent Anand asked.

                I wanted to come clean, but there was no way I could. I think the only connection they had between me and the portal was the formula, but I couldn’t know what the other had said. It was all just too much. If I told them the truth, they’d be sure to nail me on one set of charges or another. So yet again, I took my internal path of least resistance and said with less confidence, “No, I’ve never traveled to another dimension.”

                Agent Anand pressed on saying, “Look, we’re here voluntarily and your talking to us voluntarily. Let’s keep it that way and not issue take this to court, ok? Rahul, your company’s formula is based in chemical compounds that we didn’t know existed until this product hit the market. Yet, they just so happen to be almost identical to this imported product form dimension 367A. This leads me to believe that you somehow got some of their product and synthesized your own. Now, your company is safe. No one is suing you and we’re not here to pass judgment on your business. We just think that you may have some information about this dimension that could be useful to us. So, for real this time, please tell us what you know.”

                “Shit,” That was all I could say in the moment as I looked down. They had me nailed for something and I was stuck. “If I tell you what I know will it make my life better?”

                “We can’t say for sure, but your prospects will look a lot nicer if you tell us what you know now and not in court,” Agent Anand said with a sympathetic look in his eye.

                “I visited that dimension accidentally during my second year of undergrad at NCIT. I was following a friend who’d vanished through a portal that was in the basement. When I left that dimension, I carried back with me a bag that had ‘little formula’ in it. That’s how I got the new chemical compounds.”

                “What’s it like over there? We need a report of information that’s untainted by tourists.”

                “The Amazons treat humans as babies. They have native humans who to my knowledge are babied their whole lives. Apparently, the place I was at was the best place for humans, but other ‘schools’ don’t let grown adults work or learn. I’d estimate the average Amazon size at around 13’ tall and probably 350 or 400 pounds. We are as powerful physically compared to them as a two-year-old is when compared to us. If I hadn’t managed to leave when I did, I would have been permanently ‘adopted’ by an Amazon who would have babied me my entire life.”

                I hated to say it, but there was a part of me that wanted to stay. Wanted to say with Jack and Daddy Dan. I could have had a good life over there and I wouldn’t have ever gotten into this mess. There wouldn’t be a company selling formula that America was having a conversation about it being the new drug destroying society. I wouldn’t have been rich there, but I would have never wanted for anything that Daddy Dan couldn’t have provided me. Things would have been simple that way. Returning made things much more complicated. It created as much opportunity for me as it did problems.

                “And the portal itself? Any idea where that’d be or who would know about its whereabouts?”

                I told them about Professor Brown, Jack, and Sara. It all came spilling out right there and the agents soaked it up like a diaper. They shook my hand again, thanked me for my time, and said that no charges were going to be filed. I guess I’d done the right thing then. I’d had a problem that they’d created, but then they took that problem away. I guess sometimes powerful tech gets taken by the most powerful people. I guess that’s the way it should be, but what do the powerful want with more power? The machine just thirsts for more in a never-ending cycle of conquest and oppression. I’d just done my part to help that machine and to protect the small about of power that I held.

                I’d never see any FBI agents again. My business would thrive into the future unobstructed. Jack and I would grow rich and we’d be happy together. That’s the ending I wanted my story to have. But since when did life deal you a fairytale deck? When I first walked through that portal was when I had the opportunity to live in a fantasy land forever. That’s when I was dealt my fairytale deck, but I folded. I only returned because of Jack. He learned to accept me as a little over time and it’s a beautiful thing what love can do. However, it’s clear to me now that my second year at NCIT will haunt me for the rest of my life. That fateful step into the void had changed my life forever and things could never be simple ever again.

[Panther Cub]

This story is very intriguing. Can't wait for the next chapter!

[SGTbaby]

Nice and life doesn’t get simpler especially with three-letter agencies involved.