Academy II (Complete)

[princesstreegirl]

@Personalias what a great read!! I totally didn’t see the twist coming!! I can’t believe AI said no but now I see why she left her world to explore. I would have totally said YES!! Living my life as a carefree baby.

@Dophie and Pudding, your first 7 chapters took my breath away and made me feel like I could believe in magic msg wonder like I did when I was a kid. Thank you for an amazing read.

@Miamoore thank you for allowing these amazing authors contribute to the amazing world of The Academy series:

[Mia Moore]

On 3/18/2024 at 7:44 PM, Personalias said:

I don't think I've seen as skillfully constructed and sincere love letter to the forced regression genre as a whole since Princess Potty Pants wrote the first ever Diaper Dimension story. 

I have never been so flattered.  

On 3/20/2024 at 8:03 PM, princesstreegirl said:

@Miamoore thank you for allowing these amazing authors contribute to the amazing world of The Academy series:

The best writing decision I've ever made!  

[bigred0603]

Academy II
By BigRed0603

 

"At the end of the world, there will be neither clamor nor calamity, neither echo nor epoch.  It will be mired in silence and sleep, in deliverance and death.  At the end of the world, there will be both patience and purpose, both temperance and time.  Only then will it be graced with eternity, and from eternity, a chance."

                                                    -The Source, in valediction

 

 

 

Chapter 1

Ai Sinclair stared up at the uninspiring yet intimidating monastery belonging to the Thothean Church. The plain gray building that looked more like an office building rather than a place of worship. The series of connected concrete square buildings without even a window to look inside housed what was undoubtedly the most important institution in the world. Behind her, two women in extremely modest, lengthy, green dresses with white lace across the bust encouraged Ai forward.

The clergy of Cas Lo Cho Thoth had been around for around a hundred years, but really emerged into the public eye only a few years ago. With their brief time in the limelight, they had brought massive, sweeping, and positive changes to the world. At first the public was skeptical about a religion that openly worshiped an old god. While descriptions of Cas Lo Cho Thoth varied from different sources, they were all something right out of a horror book. Its form was something the human mind couldn’t really comprehend, and that inherently scared most people. Once everyone learned just what this church was capable of, however, their opinions changed.

The church was able to converse with their god, and their god delivered them answers. The secrets of the universe were theirs to know. The Thothians quickly proved this by correctly mapping the location of several far away astral bodies. They even discovered several new black holes and distant stars that scientists at the time didn’t know about. These were things that, while easily proven true, would be impossible for anyone to know, unless they were omniscient. The public begrudgingly accepted the reality that this church was talking to a god, and it was giving them answers.

Governments and corporations quickly lined up to ask their questions once the truth was out, and the Thothean Church was happy to deliver. There were limits to the church’s answers, however. They only answered questions approved by their god, and never favored one faction over another. Cas Lo Cho Thoth wouldn’t grant one government the knowledge needed to destroy another, nor would it give a corporation the perfect phrase or product to hypnotize their customer. It always had the good of all mankind in mind, and so did Thoteanism by extension. With resources coming in from all of these wealthy benefactors, Totheanism quickly grew its resources and power.

The large complex, called the Quiet Cathedral, was a result of this, and inside this building the clergy worked diligently to answer questions for their benefactors and, more importantly, questions that would benefit all of mankind. It didn’t take too much time for the opinion of the public toward the church to change. The Church had solved world hunger, eliminated the energy crisis, increased the average life span by 50%, and resolved numerous political disputes. They had also vastly improved the lives of marginalized peoples all over the world. The knowledge that there was a god, one that didn’t care for the bigotry of other religions, had done a lot to eliminate that flavor of hate.

There were still some holdouts from other religions, but those groups were treated as fringe conspiracy theorists merely tolerated by the general public. The church never worried about attacks from these groups. They were above the laws of any government, and in the same vein they were protected from any malicious actions. Anyone that went against Thotheanism was effectively going against the whole world.

 It was this thought that intimidated Ai as she slowly made her way up the imposing steps and into the equally imposing complex. The two women behind her subtly forced her forward. As she approached the threshold, Ai remembered why she was brought here in the first place.

An official from the church visited her in her college dorm one day and “cordially invited” her to the Quiet Cathedral, the center of Totheanism. It’s not like she could really refuse their invitation; they were the biggest organization in the world. Ai couldn’t imagine what they wanted from her. The church dealt with the secrets of the universe, talked with the divine, and improved all of mankind. Ai thought she was so much smaller than all of this. What could little Ai have to do with that? The possible answers to that question terrified her, but at the same time, Ai couldn’t deny her curiosity.

It was this curiosity that overpowered her anxiety and kept her feet moving forward. It was a literal house of secrets. What would she learn there? What was waiting for her on the other side of those modest-looking doors?

“This way, Ai.” One of the two women held open the metal door while the other silently ushered her inside.

No one quite knew how the Thothean Church worked, or what exactly they did to get their answers, but that was by design. If everyone knew how to ask Cas Lo Cho Thoth any question they wanted to, that would only lead to disaster. This secrecy only fueled speculation, however. Ai, like many others, had always wondered what really went on in the Quiet Cathedral, and she’d conjured all kinds of horrible and fantastic images in her mind: portals to different dimensions, aliens chanting magic languages, spaces where the laws of physics stopped working.

The reality of it seemed to be in stark contrast to Ai’s imagination. Ai stepped into a boring hallway. The floors were covered in a plain hard tile and the walls were white concrete. Plain doors led into simple office spaces or classrooms, nothing fantastical in the least. Perhaps whatever magical art that went on here had been streamlined down to the mundane.

Ai couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was not as it seemed on the surface. It was all familiar and foreboding to her. This feeling gnawed at her as she was led deeper through the maze of hallways. Despite the boring looking facility, Ai felt as though she were walking through a den of darkness.

 Ai was finally led to a small room, with a table in the middle and a window she couldn’t see through on one of the walls. It wasn’t unlike an interrogation room, and that made Ai a little nervous. She took a seat at the table and the women that were behind her had moved into the next room for a long moment. As the tension was starting to get to Ai one of the two women reentered the room.

“Ai Sinclair,” the woman said softly with a smile. She sat down at the table across from Ai.“I’m Maria, and I’m very happy to meet you.” Ai winced a little as the woman held out her hand. Alarm bells were ringing in her head, telling her that danger was near. She chalked it up to the room itself; its singular table, lamp, and one-way mirror really weren’t helping Ai get over this feeling of being interrogated. Ai powered through and shook Maria’s outstretched hand.

 "What exactly is going on here?” Ai asked, her suspicion obvious. “I know what you guys do, but I don’t know what all it has to do with me. I’m just me. I’m just a person.”

“Not quite dear,” Maria said, shifting her posture a bit. “You’re more than just a person, at least we’re reasonably sure you are. That’s what we’re confirming now, actually.”

“What?” Ai looked around the room. The only way anyone would be confirming anything about her was through the one-way window, so there had to be someone on the other side observing the conversation.

“You don’t have to do anything special sweetie, just wait there a moment. My partner, Judith, is busy helping one of our speakers commune with our god.” Ai’s vision shot back over to the window. On the other side of that glass, someone was talking with a god.

“You mean right now? Just over there?” Ai pointed to the window, and Maria nodded with a laugh.

“Yes right over there.” 

Ai’s mind raced at the thought. Just a few feet on the other side of that window, someone was communing with Cas Lo Cho Thoth … about her. The church’s secret methods were so tantalizingly close, and Ai found herself suddenly eager to be taken behind that window and see for herself. 

“We believe, Ai, that you may be one of our speakers,” Maria said seriously.

“A speaker,” Ai turned to Maria, shocked. The speakers were the members of the clergy that actually spoke for Cas Lo Cho Thoth. As far as Ai knew, they were like monks or nuns, but no one really knew what the speakers did behind closed doors. “I didn’t think …” Ai tried to formulate a question but it was lost in her throat.

 “Yes, well we do labor to keep our processes secret,” Maria explained. “For the safety of our speakers and for mankind in general. You see, Ai, speakers are born, not made. We’ve been searching for all of the speakers ever since our first communion with Cas Lo Cho Thoth. The young speaker behind the glass there is specifically gifted in finding other speakers. She has led us to you.” Ai had to force her mouth closed at the revelation. She never thought she would ever be wrapped up in all of this, that she had a destiny.

“I would never have thought,” Ai struggled to form her rapid thoughts into words. “I never imagined myself a speaker.”

“But you are,” Maria nodded. “The last speaker in fact. Finding you is a momentous occasion.” There was a pause as Maria let Ai accept this information. “You have a destiny, Ai, a very important one.”

“So how does this all work?” Ai asked meekly. “I’m a speaker, but what does that mean? What do I have to do?”

“All will be made clear in time, though I suppose you are owed a brief explanation.” Maria sat back a little as she explained. “Speakers talk with the voice of Cas Lo Cho Thoth. Their words are his words. Spoken in deep speak, a language not even they understand.”

“How can you speak in a language you don’t even know?” Ai questioned.

“It is achieved by getting the speakers into a trance-like state,” Maria explained. “I’m a listener. Specifically I will be your listener. It’ll be my job to get you into that trance, and to translate whatever you say while you’re in it.”

“You’re my listener?” Ai questioned.

“Yes. We’ve known from the beginning that there were 23 speakers out in the world, and we’ve prepared twenty-three listeners for them. Cas Lo Cho Thoth tells us which listener will be paired with which speaker. You are the last speaker, and I am the last unpaired listener. So, you can imagine how excited I am to meet you.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Ai said thoughtfully. “What exactly does this mean for me?”

“Well,” Maria shifted a little uncomfortably. “It means you’ll need to live the rest of your life here in our facility, under my care. You’ll have to dedicate your life to your role. The old Ai would be gone. You would be Ai, the speaker. Not Ai the college student.”

“Do I have a choice?” Ai asked pointedly. Ai knew full well, and Maria even more so, that the church could absolutely get away with kidnapping and locking a girl away for the rest of her life if their god deemed it necessary.

“We’ve never had a speaker refuse us before,” Maria answered in a roundabout way. “It is the speaker’s destiny to live here and answer our questions. You are all predisposed to accept your call, but we won’t keep you here. Most speakers are driven by the desire to help their fellow man. It gives them all a purpose.” Ai crossed her arms and Maria picked up on that. “Though I sense with you,” Maria paused briefly and looked Ai over. “I sense that perhaps you are driven by curiosity.”

“How do you mean?” Ai struck an almost antagonistic pose.

“I get the feeling that what will keep you here is wondering how it all works. How do the speakers do what they do? What does the trance feel like? What does the voice of Cas Lo Cho Thoth sound like? What are the secrets of the universe?” Maria leaned forwards to observe Ai better. “Just a feeling I have. Am I wrong?” The blush on Ai’s face gave away the answer to Maria’s last question.

“It’s a big ask,” Ai said looking away.

“But I think you know your answer,” Maria countered quickly. “So, Ai Sinclair. Will you give up your life for the secrets of the universe?”

Ai thought about this question for a moment. She was right earlier, it was a big ask, the biggest ask even. She would be giving up her whole life, stopping everything she’s doing for the sake of this and living the rest of her life in seclusion. At the same time Maria was right too. Doing her best to help everyone was a fulfilling idea, one that would give anyone a real sense of purpose. More than that though, Maria was right about Ai’s curiosity. She desperately wanted to know how it all worked, how it all felt, what the answers truly were. It nagged at her. She felt as if some force was pulling her to the other side of the window in the room she was in. It was like Maria said, she was predisposed to say yes.

“Yes,” Ai said with finality. “I’ll be your speaker.”

“Excellent!” Maria smiled as she clapped her hands. At the same time the door behind them opened and out of it ran the strangest thing Ai had seen all day.

An adult woman bounded out of the door with child-like eagerness, which wasn’t the only child-like thing about her. In contrast to Maria’s refined and mature looking outfit, this woman was wearing a dress made for a child. It was plain white, decorated only with a strawberry motif across the chest. It was short enough that one couldn’t help but notice the diaper she was wearing. The part of the diaper Ai could see was decorated with sunflowers and bees. She could also see that it was noticeably wet. The diapered adult lisped through the pacifier in her mouth that was clipped to the collar of her dress.

“Yaaay! We gots a new speaker fren,” The childish adult ran to Ai and embraced her in a hug.

“Penny!” the voice of the other woman, Judith, followed as she emerged from the same door. “You can’t run off like that, sweetie.” Ai looked at Penny, who was still hugging her, and then over to Maria with a shocked expression.

Maria smiled and said “Welcome to your new life, Ai Sinclair.” 

[bigred0603]

Chapter 2

Ai sighed as she rested her head lazily on her hand, she absently suckled on the large pacifier clipped onto the collar of her outfit, a deliberately childish light purple romper decorated with cartoonish owls and a skirt short enough to show the snapping crotch and the diaper underneath. She was looking through a one-way mirror, and on the other side a strange scene was playing out. One that most people would find exceptionally odd, but that Ai found frustratingly familiar.

What could only be described as an adult baby was happily playing with some toys in the center of a large playpen with a floor made of soft foam mats. He was wearing light blue shortalls over a purple onesie and was currently engaged in a very fruitful discussion between a stuffed unicorn and bear, though the words weren’t exactly words.

“Gab gab go lok,” he said with a playful frown, forming the words of the unicorn talking to the bear.

“Very good Harold,” a man sitting in a rocking chair nearby said thoughtfully. His green shirt, black pants, and white ascot was clearly the male version of the listener outfit. He carefully jotted something down in a notebook. “Fluffy and Sparkles are really going at it today, aren’t they?” he asked playfully.

“Bo lock,” Harold replied with a nod.

“So, Harold,” the other man looked at a long sheet of paper sitting on a table in the room. “We are looking for a set of three days in the next month where the weather is clear over a …” he paused to look at the paper again. “50 miles radius centered around …” another look at the paper “33.92 degrees south, 18.42 degrees east. Does Fluffy have any insight there?”

“Gabo do go resh,” Harold said absentmindedly, almost like he wasn’t even paying attention to what the man was saying. “Hagga do lok besh.”

“Very good Harold,” the man said, noting something down on his notepad.

Ai raised her head as the slightly and continued watching from her position on the other side of the mirror. Another similarly childish adult, and two other adults in actual adult clothing were in the room with her. Maria and a man dressed similarly to the more mature man in the room on the other side of the mirror were discussing something quietly. Ai and the other speaker sitting toward the front of the room on childish plastic chairs, couldn’t exactly hear them.

“I just don’t get it, Kione” Ai pouted petulantly. “How is that any different from what I’ve been doing?”

“You just must not be in the right headspace,” Kione answered. She was just as childishly dressed as Ai, wearing a soft pastel pink onesie, with her own pacifier clipped on and a just as obvious diaper. Kione, though, was definitely more comfortable in her juvenile dress. Ai was still pulling at her skirt and shifting uncomfortably at the sensation of the diaper around her waist.

“I’m wearing all the stupid outfits,” Ai huffed. “And using these stupid diapers. And everything I’ve eaten lately has been covered in that pink stuff. How am I not in the right headspace?”

“It’s more than just the pink stuff, Ai,” Kione shrugged. “That just helps us get there, same with the outfits and diapers.” Kione grabbed a baby bottle and casually started drinking it. “But you have to let go.”

“I don’t like it,” Ai sighed heavily.

“I know,” Kione sympathized. “It takes time to get there. We all struggled making our first contact, but it gets easier after that.” Kione abruptly got up from her seat. “Come on, let’s see if your listener will let us go back to the playroom now.” Kione offered her hand to Ai. Ai put the pacifier clipped to her onesie in her mouth and grabbed Kione’s hand. The two speakers approached the two listeners talking to each other, and were able to catch the tail end of their conversation.

“I’m just concerned, Kenzō,” Maria spoke to the man next to her in a hushed tone. “She’s behind schedule, none of the other speakers have taken this long to make first contact.”

“Well,” Kenzō said thoughtfully, “what does Bala say about it?”

“Just to keep her regressed,” Maria said unsatisfied. “To give her a constant supply of the pink stuff. Which I’ve been doing but …”

“You just need to be patient,” Kenzō said, putting a hand on Maria’s shoulder. “This is probably a big adjustment for her. Every person is different. She just needs more time. You’re doing exactly what Cas Lo Cho Thoth says to do, so you have nothing to worry about.”

“Erm, Maria,” Ai asked bashfully, getting her listener’s attention. When the woman looked over, Ai's eyes shot to the ground. Ai had just heard a conversation she wasn’t supposed to.

“We were wondering if we could go back to the playroom now?” Kione asked for her bashful friend.

“You were supposed to be paying attention, Ai,” Maria gave Ai a stern look.

“I was,” Ai protested. “I just don’t know what I can do different.” Ai’s frustration boiled over as she talked. She had been told what she was supposed to do, and she understood it pretty well at this point. It wasn’t that much different than what Maria had explained to her when she arrived, only the trance she mentioned was more accurately described as a certain headspace.

As it turned out, the secret to talking with a god was to get adults to act like babies: a completely ridiculous solution to a cosmic problem. Yet none could argue with the results. It worked. When the speakers were childish enough, their playful babble was the deep speak connected to their god. Despite knowing this, Ai couldn’t replicate the feat. No matter how ridiculous her outfit was, how full her diaper was, or how much she acted like a baby, all her babble had been just that: meaningless babble.

“I know dear,” Maria sighed. “Come on, let's go back to the playroom.” Maria spun Ai around and playfully patted her diaper to usher her along, eliciting a blush.

“I hope we didn’t miss snack time,” Kione said as she and Kenzō followed behind.

“Even if you did, I think I can sneak you two some cookies,” Kenzo said with a wink.

“Or maybe some of those little mushy muffin cakes?” Kione asked hopefully.

“They’ll be pink,” Kenzo said matter of factly.

“Ah yeah, I have questions soon,” Kione playfully elbowed Ai.

“Yup, got a whole list for you tomorrow,” Kenzō spoke as the two left the room into the maze of hallways. Though it was still a maze, Ai knew by now how to find the play room, and so she and Kione walked out front while the two adults walked behind.

“What do I have this time?” Kione asked.

“Some stuff about troop movements near Lillikol,” Kenzo said dismissively. “And something about a potential attack by North Sloughtland.”

“Jeez, that’s heavy,” Kione sighed. “All Harry gets asked about is the weather. Are you gonna come watch me bab out, Ai?”

“I don’t really wanna,” Ai said dejectedly. “It’s just gonna make me feel bad.” Kione gave a pointed look at Kenzō, who passed the look on to Maria.

“I’ll see what I can do, sweetie,” Maria said. “I hate making you unhappy.”

“Thanks Maria,” Ai said wistfully.

The group finally arrived in the play room. It was a room not unlike the one they were just observing, only this one was larger and filled with more speakers. There were several different toy stations in the room: one section had a television where a group of speakers were watching a movie, another had a table with some board games where two speakers were engaging in a trading card game. Of course, there was also a section filled with childish toys like rattles and building blocks, and an oversized baby bouncer and walkers where several speakers were engaged in more juvenile play with each other.

“Be back in a moment with those snacks,” Kenzō smiled as Kione and Ai entered the room.

“Oh Ai,” Maria said, fetching a bottle out of a pocket in her dress and handing it to her speaker. Ai could see the so-called pink stuff, which would force her into a more childish state of mind. “This needs to be finished by the time I come back.” Ai looked at the bottle, then back at Maria. “I know you don’t like it sweetie, but it’s going to help you make your first contact.” 

Ai took the bottle, but she clearly wasn’t happy about it.

“It’s ok, Ai,” Kione said cheerfully. “Ken’s gonna come back with my pink snack, and we’ll be baby together. I’m sure we’ll build an awesome block tower or something.” The thought did a little to improve Ai’s mood, but not a ton. “Let’s go see if we can steal the TV until then.” “Weren’t you telling me earlier you had never seen Weird Happenings?” Kione took Ai’s hand and walked deeper into the play room. 

“You haven’t seen Weird Happenings, Ai?” One of the speakers sitting by the television turned around aghast after overhearing the remark. There were two by the tv, only loosely paying attention to the reality show they were watching: Talita and Wendy

“Well, not really,” Ai started.

“Are you a little too babbed out for a show that heavy?” the speaker filled in for her.

“I’m never not too babbed out,” Ai pouted, showing her cloudy bottle. “It’s not fair.”

“Maybe a Disney movie then?” the other speaker offered.

“Oh, come on Talita!” Wendy complained. “I just got done being babbed out. I don’t really wanna watch a Disney movie.”

“Come off it Wendy,” Talita said with her hand on her hip. “We can watch Lilo and Stitch. I know that’s your favorite.” Wendy didn’t say anything, but she gave a look of reluctant acceptance. Every time Ai heard Wendy’s name, she felt a nagging sense of familiarity. Maybe she’d known the girl before they both came here. She’d wondered more than once if she should bring this up to Wendy, but she was worried that might be awkward. They used to be adult women, and now they were stuck being babies. 

Kione and Ai joined the other two speakers, as Wendy handed the console controller to Talita, who started up the movie before settling into one of the bean bag chairs. 

“So how have you been adjusting, Ai?” Wendy asked as the movie started.

“Terribly!” Ai said with a pout. The other three speakers shared a sympathetic look.

“Yeah, the first few months or so are kinda rough,” Talita agreed. “But it gets easier.”

“Plus, think of all the cool stuff we’re doing,” Wendy added. “Learning the secrets of the universe and helping the human race.”

“I dunno what I would do out there in the real world if I left,” Talita pondered. “I’ve gotten so used to things here. Plus, can you imagine what those old-religion conspiracy theorists would do if they found us.”

“It’s still dumb!” Ai interjected. “Why do we all have to be baby? Why is pooping ourselves and babbling like idiots the way to get answers?”

“That’s just how it works,” Kione shrugged. “Daddy’s like some kinda eternal cosmic being from beyond the stars or whatever. At least that’s what Ken tells me.” Ai winced a little at the speaker’s nickname for Cas Lo Cho Thoth. She couldn’t deny that it was easier to say in conversation though. She found herself switching to it when she wasn’t thinking about it.

“To understand the nature of Cas Lo Cho Thoth is to invite madness into one’s mind,” Wendy parodied some kind of religious figure making an overexaggerated hand motion, which garnered a giggle from Talita.

“You nailed the clergy, Wendy. I don’t get how they can be so serious. Cas Lo Cho Thoth this, secret of the universe that. Meanwhile, they got us babies over here doing the real work.”

“Takes a bit of the mystique out of it for sure,” Kione giggled.

“Speaking of ...,” Wendy blushed and put the pacifier clipped to her romper in her mouth. It was a telltale sign among the speakers, as it helped them get over the mental block of using their diapers. For some, this manifested as a subconscious reflex of sticking their pacifier in their mouth before filling their diapers. Which is exactly what Wendy was about to do.

“Oh that’s why she was so fussy,” Talita teased while Wendy’s face was still scrunched up. “Little baby had to make poopies,” she finished in a mocking babyish tone.

“Oh hush, Tali,” Wendy pouted and playfully threw a pillow at her, before sitting back down in her seat to keep watching the movie, as if a grown woman filling a diaper was a totally normal occurrence. For the speakers, it was. Given the amount of them that hung out in the playroom most of the time, it was almost guaranteed that there would be at least one smelly speaker, often there were two or three.

Most of the speakers had gotten used to it at this point. Ai herself was quickly approaching this as well. After all, her body had its needs, and Maria wasn’t going to let her use the bathroom. It was inevitable that her diaper would end up just as messy as Wendy’s. 

“I’ve got snacks,” Kenzō sang, approaching the group watching TV. He handed a bag of cookies to Ai and one chocolate snack cake to Kione. Ai could see some pink frosting ooze out of the snack as Kione took a bite. With his speaker now sated, Kenzō finally noticed a familiar smell in the air. “Oh, one of you girls needs a change.” 

“It’s me,” Wendy sighed with embarrassment.

“Come here, let me check.” Kenzō motioned the girl over and she followed with a smile.

“Oh Kenzō, I heard from a little bird that your son got into that big firm he was looking at,” Talita said with a smirk.

“That’s great news, Kenzō,” Wendy said as Kenzō tugged on the back of her diaper with a finger. “I bet you’re crazy proud.”

“I am,” Kenzō beamed. “And you are definitely in need of a change. I’ll let your listener know.” Kenzō sent Wendy back to her seat with a playful squish on her bottom, which elicited a small squeal.

“I helped, you know,” Talita said proudly.

“You sure did,” Kenzō confirmed. “I really appreciate you going over his drafts like that.”

“It’s no big,” Talita shrugged. “It’s nice to know I still got that architect brain kicking up there past all of the baby stuff. Never thought I’d be looking over blueprints in a messy diaper though,” Talita giggled a bit. “It’s quite the contradictory experience.”

“I can imagine,” Kione said smiling, her mouth covered in a weird mix of chocolate and pink.

“Oh Kione,” Kenzō sighed wiping Kione’s mouth with a napkin. “How about you? Do you need a change?”

“I’m just a little wet,” Kione answered, though Kenzō was already pressing against the front of her diaper.

“Kione’s soggy,” Wendy teased playfully.

“Coming from the mush tush herself,” Kione fired back.

“Oooo I can’t wait til you get babbed out on that muffin. You’re going to be so fun.” Kione’s answer was to stick her tongue out.

“Got you a bottle too,” Kenzō said, getting back on topic. He handed a bottle to Kione. It was filled with what looked like strawberry milk, though everyone in the room knew it definitely wasn’t strawberry milk.

“You got it boss,” Kione confirmed, already nursing the bottle.

“You’re a trooper K. And to you other ladies, I hope you enjoy the rest of your movie.”

“Bye Ken,” Talita smiled.

“Bye Kenzō,” Wendy gave a small wave.

“See ya,” Ai answered last, still unsure. Kenzō left the girls alone and they all got back to their normal conversation, as normal as conversation could get in the playroom.

Ai, despite arriving a few weeks ago, still hadn’t quite gotten used to things here. What struck her the most was the casualness of it all. For the other speakers, who had lived this life for months and sometimes even years, eating pink stuff that made you act like a toddler was just another Tuesday. For the listeners, changing a grown woman’s diaper was just another mundane task.

One of the stranger parts to Ai was how eerily familiar the whole thing seemed to her, though she couldn’t place her finger on why exactly. This place, these rules, these people, even Wendy’s name. They were all so familiar to her, and it all seemed so sinister. She didn’t understand why, and that ate at her. Nobody here was a bad person. There was a genuine connection between the listeners and speakers, and they were all really working toward the greater good. So why was Ai so suspicious about all of this? Why did it all feel wrong to her?

What made it even more frustrating was that it was no doubt the source of her inability to make contact with “Daddy.” She couldn’t get into the right headspace while she was constantly on edge, but she couldn’t figure out why she was so on edge because all the pink stuff she was ingesting kept fogging up her brain. Maybe at some point her brain would fog up enough for Ai to lose her anxiety, and then she could really think for once.

Despite Ai’s frustrations though, Maria’s words to her continued to prove more and more true. There was nothing keeping her there. She could leave any time she wanted; any speaker could. She didn’t, though. The promise of helping her fellow man, and learning the secrets of the universe, kept her there despite it all. There were no locks on the doors, but Ai stayed nonetheless.

“Wendy,” a listener sang over to the group watching the movie, snapping Ai out of her musings. “I heard you might need a diaper change.”

“Yeah, she stinky,” Kione giggled in a distinctly juvenile way.

“Yes, diaper change please,” Wendy said urgently. “I gotta get back and make fun of Kione while the making’s good.”

“I dunno,” the listener pondered over-dramatically. “Maybe you need some time in the bouncer first.”

“Marcus,” Wendy whined out her listener’s name to help sell her pout.

“Ok ok, come on,” Marcus grabbed Wendy’s hand and the two made their way out of the playroom.

Marcus and Wendy walked past another pair of speakers playing a card game over in the gaming area. One of the speakers sat three cards face down on a mat and then dramatically started to flip them up.

“I play the Dark Magician,” the speaker flipped over the familiar wizard. “Gia the Fierce Knight,” she flipped over the second card with a galloping horse, though she accidentally flipped it upside down. “and the Reaper of Cards.” The speaker flipped over the final card, a ghoulish specter wielding a scythe true to its name.

“That’s not how you play this game at all,” the other speaker complained. "You can’t just summon three times in one turn, and look, Gia is upside down.” The speaker pointed to the card in question. “Let’s just go play Magic if you’re not gonna take this seriously.” 

The two speakers got up to grab a different card game. 

[bigred0603]

Chapter 3

A speaker toddled down one of the many similar hallways at the Quiet Cathedral. Though this speaker knew exactly where she was going and moved through the maze of a facility like it was second nature. This speaker's outfit was exceptionally childish: a soft yellow romper with pink frills on the but and an exceptionally thick diaper and plastic pants enforcing her waddle.

With a smile behind the pacifier in her mouth and with a stuffed rabbit clenched to her chest she knocked on one of the doors. This door, like many of the doors to the speaker’s rooms, was decorated on the outside by its occupant. This door was unique and that it seemed to play into the baby aesthetic, dotted with some crayon drawn pictures and stickers of unicorns and fairies. The centerpiece was a piece of paper with “AYA” written on it and decorated with hand drawn hearts, stars, and one pony.

This speaker waited by the door expectantly, after a few moments the smile on her face vanished for a concerned look as she knocked again. Again she got no response.

“I thought I’d find you here Bala,” the speaker jumped as her listener approached behind her.

“Where’s Aya?” Bala asked, concerned.

“Oh she’s gone out on a PR run with the new speaker Ai,” the listener explained casually.

“She what?” Bala’s stomach suddenly fell and her mood darkened. “No she can’t. It’ll ruin everything. They can’t …” Bala stammered struggling to form words.

“Bala, just because Aya is hanging out with someone else doesn't mean she’s going to stop being your friend. In fact, giving you two a break from each other is probably the best thing for both of you.”

“No you don’t understand,” Bala’s voice raised slightly. “She’ll break it all down and ruin it.” Bala looked at her speaker and realized from the expression on her face that she really didn’t understand. Trying to explain what the actual problem was to anyone would be pointless.

“Come on let’s head to the playroom,” Bala’s speaker offered. “I think spending time with the other speakers will be good for you.” Bala remained silent, lost in her sudden anxiety and let her speaker lead her over to the playroom. Bala wasn’t really in the mood for it though. She found herself having a feeling that she absolutely hated. She didn’t want to be little. Her romper stuck to her and her diaper was stifling and she just wanted out of the whole thing. She had too much on her mind.

***

Ai Sinclair stood somewhat nervously at the end of a long hallway. A line of people were patiently waiting to see her, and had been for most of the day. For the first time in a long time she was wearing a modest and mature dress, though she could feel the diaper hidden underneath the skirt, and she could hear it subtly crinkle every time she moved. A man shuffled up the small partition that separated Ai and the speaker next to her from the crowd.

“Thank you,” he said piously. “My family wouldn’t have power or running water without the answers from Cas Lo Cho Thoth.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Ai smiled and nodded awkwardly though the man didn’t seem to notice as he shuffled away with a smile. Ai had been at this all day, hearing thanks from people not unlike the man that just shuffled away. Thanks for giving them food. Thanks for money. Thanks for the freedom to love and be who they want. Everyone was met with a smile, a small greeting, and then sent along. Apparently this was all they wanted with her as Ai had seen nothing but smiling faces, despite how uncomfortable she felt. 

If the silent encouragement from the speaker next to her was anything to go by, she was doing what she was supposed to do. This other speaker was basically doing the same thing. It was weird for Ai to accept these thanks; she didn’t have anything to do with those revelations. She couldn’t even talk to Daddy. She didn’t want to explain the truth of things and break their hearts though. It was this truth of things that also weighed on her. The congregation treated her as a religious icon, something solemn and holy, but she knew that the reality was vastly different. As soon as she was done here, she would go back to the facility, be dressed in her cute onesie, and sent off to be continually regressed. The general public had no clue how the speakers answered their questions. If they did, they would either lose all of their respect for the system or they would attempt to recreate it and fill the world with their fake “answers”. Ai felt guilty for her part in presenting this image of a holy figure when she knew it was partly a lie.

Ai glanced nervously behind her, where Maria and the other speaker’s listener kept a close eye on things. She met eyes with Maria, who gave an encouraging smile in return. Coming out to this thing had been Maria’s idea: She’d thought that seeing the general public’s gratitude would help Ai connect with Daddy. Ai wasn’t sure if this was really helping. Sure, it was a reminder of how important her job was, but she didn’t think it would help her connect with Daddy at all. Still, it was nice getting a break from the constant barrage of regression back at the Quiet Cathedral, even if it was spent standing around shaking hands with strangers. She would have to thank Maria for it later.

“I’m sorry, folks,” Maria cut in the line of people. “But I think our speakers may be done for today.” There were some murmurs of disappointment from the crowd, and Ai and the other speaker shot their best sympathetic glances. “We’ll have to close for today.” The other listener hastily ushered the two speakers along to a back room while Maria ushered the crowd out of the building. Once they were far enough away, the listener spoke up.

“How are your diapers, little ones?” she asked sweetly. “You need a change, Ai? Aya?”

“I can wait,” Aya said plainly. Ai just blushed.

“I’ll check again before we leave,” she motioned to leave the room. “Stay out of trouble while we close up.” The two speakers silently nodded as she left.

“I’m Aya by the way,” she said, shaking Ai’s hand. “It’s very nice to finally meet you.”

“I’m surprised we’ve missed each other this long,” Ai responded. “I thought I had met everyone.”

“Yeah, well,” Aya sighed. “Bala has been a little weird lately, very clingy.”

“I don’t think I’ve met her either.”

“You might not want to at the moment,” Aya said with a wince. “I took this little PR trip just to get out of the facility and get some time away from her. I’m glad you came along too; It gives us a chance to finally talk.”

“Well, how did I do?” Ai asked, referring to the meet and greet they’d just had.

“You did great!” Aya smiled. “Just what you are supposed to do. Smile and nod. Seems dismissive, but it gives people hope, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ai sighed a little. “I just. I dunno. How do you deal with, like, keeping the truth from everyone? Standing out there for all those people with a diaper under our dress, and knowing we’re gonna get put back into onesies and mess ourselves when we get back.”

“I dunno really,” Aya grimaced a bit. “I’ve sort of always had to deal with that.”

“What do you mean?” Ai asked.

“Well, you know Bala and I were the first two speakers,” Aya said with a hint of pride. Ai was appropriately awed.

“Wow, that's so cool!” Ai was intrigued

“Yeah, well we were sort of into the whole baby thing before all this blew up.”

“Into it?”

“Yeah, it’s called ABDL. Kind of a fetish, kind of not,” Aya blushed a little. “Point I’m making here is: I kind of always had to deal with being an adult and being serious with a diaper under my dress, and then going home to mess myself later,” she blushed again. “All that is to say that I can’t really help you there, I’ve just gotten used to it.”

“That’s fine,” Ai said, completely forgetting what she said before. “But you and Bala were the first speakers?” Ai sat down in a chair in the room. “I gotta know. How did that happen?”

“Well,” Aya blushed a bit. “The actual story of how it all happened is pretty simple. You know we both uhh …” Aya was a little flushed giving the explanation. “We both played all the time. You know, got cute, wore diapers and onesies and stuff. While we were playing, Bala thought that our babbling was a little weird, and she was right.” Aya shrugged.

“So, Bala just knew it was deep speak?”

“Not exactly. She knew it was weird. You’ve heard deep speak I assume? It’s definitely not something you would just come up with for fun. She thought it was weird and looked into it, then one thing led to another.”

“You can’t just ‘one thing led to another’ your way into Thotheanism,” Ai said skeptically.

“You can when Daddy is pushing you along in the right direction,” 

“I guess so,” Ai’s skepticism broke through in her tone. “How long did all of this take?”

“Probably like a year or so,” Aya’s finger rested on her lip in thought.

“Just a year?” Ai frowned. “You don’t find that a little too … easy?”

“I never thought about it like that. You have to remember though, Daddy was helping us the whole time. Things tend to fall into place when he’s helping.”

“I guess,” Ai felt weird about this. She was expecting some grander narrative. The reality was just so plain and basic. Aya had a point though. When you have the answers to everything at the ready, things would move along faster than you’d expect. It wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but it did give Ai an idea to solve her problem. “Maybe you can help me though, since you’re the original, and you were into all of this before coming here.”

“I heard you’d been having some trouble talking to Daddy,” Aya sat down next to Ai, guessing what she was about to ask.

“Yeah, I just,” Ai paused and sighed. “I just don’t get it. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I don’t know what’s missing.”

“Maybe you’re trying too hard,” Aya offered. Ai returned a grumpy look. “Yeah, I know, but hear me out here. Littlespace is an escape. It’s a zen thing. You put away your adult worries to be your real self. To just stop and play and enjoy that small moment. So, trying too hard might not be getting you in the zen space.”

“Because it is hard,” Ai complained. “The whole thing is dumb. I’m supposed to be zen and calm, but there’s so much pressure. And the more I don’t get it, the more they make me a baby.”

“That’s just how it works,” Aya said sympathetically. “Bala is the one that answers everything about that. About how we’re supposed to be treated and how to get us into littlespace. We get what we have to do straight from Daddy.”

“Yeah but why?” Ai cut in in frustration. “Why is this the way we have to do things? Is there not some better way?”

“That’s just how it is. It’s how Daddy works. It’s how we answer questions.”

“I just,” Ai huffed. “I dunno. I just can’t accept that. Maybe that’s my problem.” Aya looked over to Ai sympathetically.

“I hate that,” Aya said, standing up from her seat and pacing a bit. “Forcing the other speakers to be little. Littleness is supposed to be a good thing. It is for me, but it’s not always good for everyone else. I’ve always felt bad for the other speakers that things had to be this way. Aya had turned to face Ai. “I’m really sorry, Ai.” Ai was silent for a moment then looked away nervously.

“It’s not your fault,” Ai sighed in defeat. “I just wish there was something I could do. I don’t know why it has to be this way. Why we have to do things like this.”

“Well, we could always ask Daddy,” Aya said with sudden hopefulness.

“Asking Daddy is the whole problem though. I can’t.”

“You don’t need to,” Aya countered positively.

“But they must have already asked someone,” Ai waved her hand. “And they gave their answer. Keep making me more and more baby until it works, but it’s just not working.”

“Well maybe someone else can get you a better answer,” Aya reasoned.

“Can they?” Ai challenged. “I mean we’re all talking to the same Daddy right?”

“We are, but nothing is that simple,” Aya explained. “Just like when you talk to other people, you can ask questions in a way that predisposes them to a certain answer. Sometimes, the person answering can have a certain bias. All I’m saying is: it may be worth it to ask someone else about you.”

“Can you do that?”

“Well, not officially,” Aya admitted. “But we work together with our listeners, to make people’s lives better. We’re like partners. I’m sure I can get Marquis to ask some questions about you while I’m in little space.”

“Really?” Ai said in disbelief. “I don’t know that I could do that with Maria.” Ai was lost in thought about her listener. She had only really seen her as an authoritarian, someone keeping her regressed and stuck in diapers. She had not thought about her at all as a partner, but Aya wasn’t wrong. She partly invented the whole system after all. If anyone would know, it was her.

“Ok,” Aya said with determination. She moved over to a small dresser, grabbing a sheet of paper from a small stack that was resting on top, as well as a box of crayons. Obviously these two things were left in there for the speakers to occupy themselves during downtime, though they might not have predicted that this is how they would be using them. “Hit me, Ai. What are all those questions you have? Let’s get 'em all down.”

Ai and Aya spent the next few minutes coming up with a series of questions about Ai’s situation. Why couldn’t she talk to Daddy? Did she really have to be this regressed all the time? Why were she and the other speakers stuck at the facility? It was a lot of venting from Ai, and a lot of support from Aya that was all written down in crayon on several pieces of paper.

“Wow, you two seem busy,” Maria entered the room, startling Ai and Aya.

“We were just writing some questions down about Ai,” Aya answered honestly. Ai and Maria shared a look.

“I certainly have some questions of my own,” Maria sighed. “Come on, we gotta head back.”

“Hang in there Ai,” Aya encouraged. “Next time I answer questions, I’ll figure all this out for you.” Aya proudly held up the crayon-filled paper before skipping ahead out of the room. Ai wanted to hope that Aya was right. That all those questions would be asked and she would have her answers, but she couldn’t help but doubt it.

“Questions about you, huh?” Maria asked pointedly.

“Yeah well,” Ai looked away. “It’s just frustrating, you know. We keep trying everything by the book, and nothing’s working. I know you’re frustrated too. I’m sorry.”

“Ai,” Maria sighed and looked at Ai seriously. “You don’t have to be sorry. I am frustrated with things, and we have hit a wall, but that’s not your fault.”

“No, not just that,” Ai admitted. “Aya said that we’re supposed to be partners, that we should work together to find answers.” Ai paused for a moment. “I haven’t been doing that. I haven’t been your partner, and I’m sorry about that. I really appreciate you bringing me here. It was a nice trip and I feel refreshed.”

“I’m glad Ai,” Maria gently took Ai’s hand. “Let’s head back. We’ll figure all this out.” 

“Now I know I said I was refreshed but,” Ai said jokingly. Maria giggled a little.

“Is that your way of asking for a diaper change?” she said cutely. “It’s very clever.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes, it worked,” Maria rolled her eyes, taking Ai off to a side room.

Ai and Maria eventually joined Aya and Marquis in a small van, the listener ready to drive them all back to the facility.

“And where did you sneak off to?” Aya teased knowingly.

“To get a diaper change,” Ai answered plainly. “Better than spending the whole ride back in a soggy diaper,” 

“I offered to change you, Aya,” Marquis said with a grin. “It’s almost like you like being kept in soggy diapers or something.”

“Traitor!” Aya accused dramatically. Everyone laughed as the van pulled away.

Ai looked out the window as they started their drive back to the facility. There was still a large crowd gathered by the community center in the town that had been co-opted for the speaker’s appearance. They all cheered and waved as the van drove past them.

“So, I guess I’ve got some extra questions added to my list tomorrow,” Marquis spoke to Maria as she drove.

“I’ve heard,” Maria responded.

"Lots of interesting questions on there.”

“Yeah, I think we need some more interesting questions if we’re gonna get anywhere.”

“I wouldn’t have expected that from you,” Marquis noted with a quick glance. “You were always very by the book, following Bala’s answers.”

“I was,” Maria said thoughtfully. “It’s just not working though, and Ai and Aya make some good points. Maybe something needs to change if it’s going to work for her. You gotta remember, even if they’re big babies, our little speakers can be pretty smart.” Maria looked knowingly in the rear-view mirror at Ai, who had been listening intently. She blushed a little as her eavesdropping was discovered.

“Please,” Aya said comically. “When it comes to being a big baby, we all know I have Ai beat.”

“Well, not gonna get me to argue with you there,” Ai played along with the joke.

“You sure, Ai?” Maria said getting in on it as well.

“Et tu Maria,” Ai said dramatically.

“Can you believe these listeners Ai?” Aya fake pouted. “Can’t trust any of em'. They're constantly throwing us under the bus.”

“Almost like it’s their job to keep us as babies or something,” Ai agreed.

“Don’t forget putting up with all the games you girls play,” Marquis added. “That’s a big part of the job too.”

It was a playful ride back, and the speakers and their listeners were in renewed positive spirits. Even when they finally arrived back at the facility, and Ai was undressed out of her adult clothing and put back into a childish romper with a pacifier clipped on, she remained positive and hopeful. Her bleak outlook from earlier was fading away. Maybe Aya would get answers to Ai’s questions, and maybe things would get better.

“You look cute dear,” Maria commented as she fussed over one of the ruffles on the butt of Ai’s romper.

“Thanks,” Ai smiled. “This is a pretty cute one.” Ai glanced over her shoulder as she saw Aya pass by, dressed in a very short, diaper-revealing dress. She also noted that she was approached by another speaker, one who seemed very upset, contrasting the happy colors of the outfit she was wearing. That must have been Bala, the only speaker Ai had yet to meet. Judging by her attitude, this wasn’t the time to meet her. 

Aya very purposefully ignored Bala as she and Marquis walked past her, probably off to the play room. Bala shot a glance at Ai, and if looks could kill, Ai would have died, and then exploded. The moment passed quickly as Bala stormed off to somewhere. 

“What was that about?” Ai asked Maria.

“Trouble among friends it seems,” Maria pondered. “Hopefully not something that will interfere with their jobs. Come on little girl,” Maria changed to a positive attitude. “I think you could use a little nap.”

“Yes,” Ai's voice had a hint of hope in it that matched the hope she felt in her heart, “that sounds amazing,”

[bigred0603]

Chapter 4

Ai’s excitement didn’t last very long. Aya’s latest question session, which had included the ones concerning Ai, hadn’t yielded any new information. Cas Lo Cho Thoth refused to even answer a single question about Ai. The one hope she had that things would change was dashed. It felt as if her last chance of actually getting answers and understanding had been taken, and she had been disheartened since then. So, she remained quiet while Maria taped her into another diaper.

“I’m sorry Ai,” Maria sighed, noting her speaker’s mood. “I know it’s hard.” Aid didn’t respond and Maria sighed again. She helped Ai down from the changing table and left her alone for a moment as she prepared a list of questions.

Maria was due to ask Ai some more questions today, though Ai was confident that whatever new set of test questions they were going to give her wouldn’t matter. Nothing would come of it. While Maria was looking over her list of apparent questions, Ai made her way over to the toy chest in her room. On the top was the list of questions she and Aya had thought of when they made their excursion; after the failed attempt, Aya had returned them to her. All were about the conditions of the speakers at the facility and why things had to be the way they were. As she looked at them though a thought hit her.

“Maria,” Ai asked her listener.

“What is it sweetheart?” Maria barely looked up from her papers.

“Do you think maybe we could ask these questions?” This piqued Maria’s interest enough to put her papers down.

“You know we’re not supposed to do that,” Maria said knowingly. Ai gave her a questioning look, as they both knew that Aya and her speaker Marquis had broken this rule not too long ago. “These questions are important, and we need to use the time while you’re in headspace strategically.”

“Yeah, but my questions aren’t anything,” Ai pointed out. “It’s just testing stuff, to see if I actually am talking to Daddy or not. It’s not like you’ll be missing anything important.” Maria didn’t respond but gave Ai a look, before motioning with her hands for the crayon filled papers. She looked over the papers and then glanced at Ai.

“I don’t know about this,” Maria said hesitantly.

“What do we gotta lose?” Ai shrugged. “I know you’re just as frustrated as I am, and we’ve tried everything. Why not try this?” Maria looked unsure.

“We’ll see,” Maria placed the crayon questions at the bottom of her stack of regular ones. Ai took this answer for a “no” and pouted in frustration. Maria sighed, and grabbed Ai’s hand.

It was a short, quiet walk to one of the smaller play rooms they used to ask the speakers questions. Just a small play pen full of toys and a rocking chair for the listeners to sit while their charges babbled away. When they arrived, Maria helped Ai into the playpen. Ai crawled over to the toys and started playing, just trying to move things along and get it over with. This time a rattle-like toy caught her attention. She rolled onto her back and played with the toy. The rattle had a bunch of little balls attached to a plastic ring. Each ball had a different texture and made a different sound when shaken. 

It took a few moments for Ai to lose herself in the right mood. It was never that difficult for her, the pink stuff helped with that, but this time seemed especially fast, and especially deep. Something was different about this session. It wasn’t different enough for Ai to have any real hopes though. Maria sat down in the rocking chair in the room, not noticing any difference in Ai.

 “Ok, Session 7 starting, speaker Ai Sinclair.” Maria opened with the typical starting line, used to organize the recordings. “I see you’ve favored the sensory rattle today, little Ai.”

“Aaa,” Ai replied. Part of this was acting on Ai’s part. She knew that the speakers were supposed to babble, so when she was asked these questions, she elected to just babble the first syllables that came to her mind instead of actual words. Ai could tell from Maria’s reaction that this wasn’t the deep speak that contained the coded messages from Cas Lo Cho Thoth. Ai was used to this reaction. She took it on the chin and kept playing, this time moving onto a series of shapes in a box. She dumped all the shapes out and began a game of putting them back in the box while Maria talked.

“So Ai, here’s a question. Yesterday at exactly 3:57 pm, what color was the street light at the intersection of Brixley Avenue and Aimes Road on the Aimes Road side in Farzon, North Virginia?”

“Gab go brock,” Ai babbled without thinking. The sigh from Maria meant that this too was a no go. Though, at the moment, Ai was more annoyed with this particular box of shapes, because she couldn’t sneak all of the shapes into the square hole.

Ai didn’t even pay attention to the next few questions she was asked. Where was this person? What did this person say? Where was such and such planet? Questions that only an omniscient god would know. Just more tests to see if Ai could talk to their god, and, so far, she had failed all of them. Ai was used to this though, and paid it no mind. She had put all the shapes back in their correct hole and was now distracting herself with some toy cars.

Maria paused before asking the next question: something about the contents of a certain safety deposit box. Before asking it though, she brought up the crayon filled list of questions Ai had given her. Ai wasn’t wrong earlier; Maria was frustrated, and it felt like the two of them had been running up against a brick wall ever since Ai had arrived. She knew it was against the rules, and she would probably get in trouble for it, but what else was there to do? At least it was something different.

“Why isn’t Ai answering her questions?” Maria asked, trying very hard to ask it like she had asked all the other questions. Ai answered without thinking, assuming it was just another test question.

“Graf to bo lok. Eshlamor. Tonu just velt talik,” Ai babbled out. She stopped for a moment after she did. Those were unusually wordy, but Ai brushed off the concern and kept playing. Maria paused for a moment recognizing what Ai had just said. The series of random words were not, in fact, random words, but perfectly articulated deep speak. Deep speak that had very clearly answered the question Maria had just asked. She didn’t want to mess with whatever was happening, so she decided to play it off and not let Ai know the significance of the words she said.

“Why do the speakers have to stay at our facility? Can they leave?”

“Trada do lesh. Belka do lo ma. Karliragaleigh,” Ai giggled at that last one. “Karliragaleigh,” she said again with a giggle, finding the word funny.

“Uh huh, uh huh, that’s very interesting,” Maria paused for a moment to do something she hadn’t ever had to do: write down answers. The lack of frustrated energy from Maria finally got Ai’s attention and she looked at Maria in confusion. “You’re doing a very good job sweetie,” Maria smiled. Ai rolled her eyes, assuming that Maria was just patronizing her. “So, when is Chikky the chick going to hatch from her egg?” Maria decided to ask another filler question while Ai was paying attention, and it worked. Ai went back to her playing.

Maria continued alternating between the questions she was given and the ones she and Aya had come up with. The pattern was consistent: every question that she and Aya had come up with was met with an actual answer. It was something to wonder about later, at the moment Maria was focusing her attention on effectively keeping up her ruse, as excitement and relief both were threatening to spill out. From Ai’s perspective, the only strange thing about this session was that it was going on longer than usual. When the last question was asked, there was a long pause as Maria made her final notes.

“Session 7, Ai Sinclair is over.” Ai put down the plush cat she was playing with as she heard the usual signal that Maria was done asking quetions.

“Can I go nap now?” Ai asked.

“Ai, you did it!” Maria said finally showing her excitement and hugging Ai.

“What did I do?” Ai tried to push Maria off. “I mean I need a change I guess.”

“No, you did it. You spoke.”

“But,” Ai looked at Maria confused. “How? I just …”

“I don’t know. Maybe you just needed some specific questions. It was all the ones you and Aya wrote up,” Maria said, showing the crayon filled pieces of paper. Ai stepped back and fell on her bottom to take everything in.

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Ai breathed out.

“Mmmhmm,” Maria agreed. “I’ll send these off to the clergy, and we can get you better questions for next time.”

“Really?” Ai was just now remembering some of the questions her and Aya had come up with. “What was it? What did I say?”

“I’m not sure,” Maria gave a quick answer. “I’ll have to spend some time with the translation to know the answers for sure, but I’m sure you’ll have plenty of follow up questions.”

“Oh great,” Ai responded in a half annoyed, half relieved way. Maria laughed, happy that both she and her charge had finally made real progress.

On the other side of the one-way window to the playroom, a small group of five invested speakers were watching.

“She did it! She really did it!” Talita cheered.

“And with the questions we wrote,” Aya added excitedly. “I thought that might be it; she just wasn’t being asked the right questions.”

“I’m curious what the answer to some of those were,” Kione said, giving a knowing look to her listener Kenzō.

“Well,” Kenzo said, grabbing the hair on the back of his head unsure, “Each one of you is a little different, and you know we can’t really translate on the fly, it takes some time.”

“Sounds like an excuse,” Wendy said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Wendy!” the girl’s listener chided from a little distance away.

“We just wanna know,” Talita defended Wendy’s outburst.

“It is important,” Aya added. Wendy’s speaker looked at Kenzō and shrugged. “And I know you can tell some of what she’s saying. Just tell us what you picked up on.”

“Well I just don’t know for sure,” Kenzō said vaguely. 

“The answers just didn’t make sense to me,” Talita’s speaker cut in. “There must be something there, some weird dialect or sentence structure Ai’s using.”

“That has to be it,” Wendy’s listener rested her head on her hand. “I mean surely it has to be wrong. All we’ve been doing can’t just be wrong.”

“We all heard the same thing though,” Marquis said quietly in deep thought.

“Maybe we should worry about this later,” Wendy brushed off the serious atmosphere. “For now, we gotta celebrate. Ai finally spoke with Daddy.”

“Oh yeah,” Talita said happily. “We should throw a little party for her.”

“Yeah yeah,” Kione was getting caught up in the energy. “I used to be a pretty good baker. Maybe I can make her a cake,” she looked at Kenzō hopefully. Kenzō grimaced a bit.

“I dunno girls,” he said slowly. This caused a loud whine of complaint from the four speakers who all chided Kenzō with begging and puppy dog expressions.

“All right all right,” Wendy’s listener had to come in to save Kenzō. “We’ll get in touch with Maria and see what we can do.”

While four of the speakers were taking part in joyous party planning, a fifth was on her own in a decidedly different mood. Bala was gritting her teeth in anger, looking into the now empty room that Ai was in. She was fuming and stomping her feet.

“Everything ok, sweetheart?” Bala’s listener had moved over to check on her.

“No!” Bala said through gritted teeth. “No, it’s not,” The listeners may not have known exactly what Ai had said in there, but Bala sure did, and she didn’t like it. “That little brat in there. She’s going to ruin everything. Why can’t she just leave it alone?” Bala’s arms were by her side and the room was a bit quiet as her quiet grumblings had grown into an outburst. 

“What’s gotten into you Bala?” her listener finally spoke up in shock. “This isn’t like you at all, and it's very bad behavior.”

“What? No.” Bala’s face and tone changed to one of pleading. “No. I’m not a bad girl. Ai is the bad girl. She’s always the bad girl. She’s not supposed to speak to Daddy, she can’t. You don’t understand, you can’t understand, but I’m the good girl here.” Bala was trying to convince a room of people who didn’t even know they were in a position to be convinced of anything.

“Come on Bala,” the listener said sternly, grabbing her hand. “Clearly someone needs a nap. I’m very sorry about this girls; I just don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

“But I …” Bala stopped doing anything other than accepting it would only make her more of a bad girl. She resigned, hanging her head and sniffling.

Everyone else in the room looked on in confusion. Bala’s reaction was very strange, even for this strange place, and there was also the awkwardness that always permeated a room in the rare events where speakers had to be disciplined. Though, the other times it happened, the speaker in question was usually in the midst of a pink stuff fueled tantrum. Bala, by all accounts, was all herself. Aya, in particular, showed grave concern. She gently tugged on the sleeve of her listener Marquis.

“I think I’d like to take a nap as well,” Aya said.

“Oh, don’t let Bala ruin it for you Aya,” Wendy tried to get Aya to stay.

“Don’t worry about me,” Aya said with a smile. “I’m fine, and let me know whatever plan you guys come up with for Ai’s party. I’d love to help.”

“If you say so,” Talita shrugged.

With that, Marquis left for Aya’s room, and later Aya would have to ask Bala just what exactly was going on with her.

[bigred0603]

Chapter 5

The cafeteria was abuzz with the excited conversation of all of the speakers, mingling in their cutest party dresses or outfits for the momentous occasion. All nibbling on the various small snacks and sweets that had been lovingly prepared by the listeners and even some of the speakers who were still proficient at cooking. The last speaker had finally made contact with Cas Lo Cho Thoth. One of the church's long term goals had been accomplished and everyone was celebrating.

The speaker of the hour, Ai, was stuck in a play pen toward the back of the cafeteria, the only other speaker sitting with her was Aya. Both of them were too small to be allowed the dresses and rompers of their peers so instead they were put in onesies, Ai’s white and decorated with fairies and Aya’s a light blue with stars.

“Sorry you gotta spend the party in the play pen,” Aya said over her star decorated pacifier.

“It’s all right,” Ai said with an accepting sigh. She stood up briefly to stack a soft felt block on the top of an already sizable stack of felt blocks. “Maria seems pretty eager to get me in for follow up questions,” Ai plopped back down on her bottom.

“You caused quite a stir apparently,” Aya grabbed another felt block. “Marquis was a little shook up about it.”

“Maria still hasn’t told me what I answered with.”

“It is her first time,” Aya nodded. “She’s still gotta get used to how you answer things. We’re all a little different, you know. Even if all the listeners can get the gist of what we’re saying, you’re not gonna know the specifics without studying us personally.” Ai stuck her tongue out as she tried to carefully place the block on top of the stack without knocking it over.

“I dunno maybe,” Ai was not convinced by Aya’s theory. She felt like Maria knew what she said, but something was keeping her tight lipped about it. She had been noticeably more antsy lately.

“You guys want some finger sammies,” Wendy approached the playpen with a plate full of finger sandwiches in tow. She was in what was basically a maid’s dress, only shorter to deliver the obvious look at the diaper underneath that all of the Speaker’s clothes did. The red dress and apron complete with matching headband was probably a special request from Wendy though, and she brought it out for the party.

“One sec,” Aya held a finger out to Wendy as she gingerly placed her block on top of the stack. Beaming when the tower remained steady.

“Do you have questions soon too Aya?” Wendy asked.

“Nope just didn’t want Ai feelin lonely,” Aya took several of the small sandwiches.

“She likes playing baby,” Ai teased.

“I suppose it can be fun at times,” Wendy said thoughtfully. “But we don’t get that many parties, so I’m gonna make the most out of it.” Wendy paused to sniff the air as a familiar smell wafter to her. “One of you needs a change.” Aya blinked for a moment.

“Is that me or you Ai?”

“That’s me,” Ai blushed slightly, though her reaction was much more muted than what she would have had when she first arrived here. “Can you really not tell Aya?”

“Oh I can,” Aya smirked. “But it’s cute when you admit it like that.” Ai frowned and tossed a block at the stacked tower knocking the careful construction to the ground. Aya pouted and plopped on her bottom. The exchange elicited a giggle from Wendy.

“I’ll go get Maria for you Ai,” Wendy said. She paused for a moment before leaving. “I probably need my diaper checked too,” she thought out loud. “Anyway see you two later.” Wendy skipped away from the play pen, and over to the window on the opposite side of the cafeteria. It looked into the kitchen, like what you might see at a diner. She sat her tray of sandwiches down on the counter and looked into the window. A group of speakers were in the kitchen, Maria included.

“Maria,” Wendy called into the kitchen in a singing voice. “Ai could use a diaper change.”

“I’ll get to it in a minute Wendy,” Maria called back, shooing the speaker along. Her gaze turned back to Kenzō and Marquis, the other two listeners in the kitchen with her. They were both going over a piece of paper with serious expressions.

“And you’re sure you translated this right?” Kenzō asked. “I mean you haven’t had the time to pick up on Ai’s dialect fully.”

“I thought it might be wrong too,” Maria admitted. “But I’ve been over the recording several times. It can’t be anything else.”

Maria had circled several sections of the paper that she deemed particularly important. One of the circled questions was: “Why do the speakers have to wear diapers?” The answer was translated as: “It was not my intent, but the Chariot wanted it.” An immediate follow up question to this was also circled: “Who is the Chariot?” The answer: “The Chariot is the Chariot.” Another circled question: “Why couldn’t Ai talk to you before now?” The answer was again cryptic: “The Chariot kept the Magician from me. I did not know her.” Once again an immediate follow up question of: “Who is the Magician?” was met with the simple but unhelpful: “The Magician is the Magician.” The group of three listeners were pondering over these answers.

“Have you sent these off to the Clergy?” Marquis asked.

“Of course,” Maria answered quickly. “They think I’ve mistranslated. It goes directly against what Cas Lo Cho Thoth has told us before. But I know my translation is right.” Maria said with conviction.

“Who is the Chariot is my question,” Kenzō breathed heavily. “Cas Lo Cho Thoth has never been this vague. Especially when we ask so directly like that.”

“Whoever The Chariot  is, they were able to keep it from doing what it wanted,” Marquis chimed in. “They may be able to get it to hide their identity as well.”

“I have one thought,” Maria spoke up. “When I asked about Ai I think it was calling her the Magician. Which makes me think that the Chariot may be a speaker too.”

“That’s a bit of a leap,” Kenzō crossed his arms.

“I dunno,” Marquis shrugged. “It makes sense to me.”

“Maybe we should come back to this,” Kenzō sighed. “I need some time to think on this, and your listener needs a change,” Kenzo nodded to Maria. “I’d wager ours do as well.” The listeners all dawned some smiles as they went out to their charges. As they left the kitchen they bumped into a speaker wearing a fluffy white and red dress decorated with roses.

“Sorry Bala,” Marquis apologized with a smile as the listeners moved past her. 

Bala barely paid attention to them, she had a lot more on her mind. She had been eavesdropping on the listeners ever since they snuck off into the kitchen. Bala had been eager to know what answers Ai was giving ever since she found out she had successfully made contact. She was never supposed to, and there was no telling what Ai would tell them. As Bala was listening though, her worst fears became reality.

Ai had all but let the cat out of the bag. At least Bala’s actual name wasn’t dropped, but it wouldn’t take the listeners long to figure out who the Chariot was. She couldn’t stay here if they figured that out. If they figured out that she had lied to them. Lied about who Cas Lo Cho Thoth was, and lied about needing to do all of this to get their questions answered. That was a big lie. Lying wasn’t something good girls would do, and Bala couldn’t bear to live in a world where she couldn’t be a good girl any more.

Bala glanced over to the play pen. Ai and Aya were being changed next to each other in the play pen, a small crowd of onlookers gathering much to Ai’s embarrassment. Bala wished that could be her. Getting that kind of cooing attention from her caregiver and her friends, fully submitting to the life of a baby girl, and that steeled her determination. Getting Aya to realize exactly what she was should be enough to get doomsday started.

Bala waited for Ai and Aya to finally finish being changed and for the crowd to disperse, before solemnly approaching their playpen.

“Glad you decided to enjoy the fun, Bala,” Aya said, noticing Bala approach.

“I’m not here to enjoy the fun,” Bala said plainly. “The opposite, actually. I’m putting a stop to this.”

“You mean the party” Aya said, still hoping Bala wasn’t about to ruin the moment. “We got permission for the party Bala, it’s ok to have it.”

“I’m not talking about the party. I’m stopping all of this. It’s over.”

“I don’t understand?” Aya said, confused.

“You will,” Bala retorted. “You just need to be reminded of what you are. You’re the Star. Don’t you remember. You were with me in our garden at the end of the universe.” 

“What did you say?” Ai asked with a growing sense of dread.

“I called her what she is,” Bala said plainly. “She is the Star. I’m the Chariot. You’re the Magician. Wendy is the Wheel of Fortune. Harrold the Hanged Man. Do I need to keep going or are you up to speed yet?” As Bala kept talking the mood in the room soured immensely as all the speakers turned to face Bala with a look of shock. Bala looked around at the faces staring at her. “Won’t be long now,” Bala sighed in resignation.

“You you you,” Ai stammered as a wave of new memories hit her. She was pressing keys on a piano while hunting for a ghost. She was moving from bubble to bubble in a vast universe and suddenly became aware of a hole in her heart with the name of Rin. She was living a contented life as a pet half dog half girl hybrid. She was forced into a punishment with no end by a powerful A.I.. She was shyly modeling that latest baby print diaper to the audience watching her live stream. A font of different memories from different universes flooded into her in an instant.

“Bala why did you…” Ai stopped and looked at Aya whose face was even more shocked than Ai’s.

Aya’s memories were just as vast and just as vivid as Ai’s, but one specific memory was claiming all of her attention. A memory from the beginning of this universe, where she shaped it with a voice whispering in her ear. A memory where she shed a part of her subconscious to answer questions and fulfill a grand design. Cas Lo Cho Thoth, the god of Thothianism was Aya. As she regained her memory, this part of herself flooded back into her and a surge of power shook her body.

Ai heard an explosion off in the distance and Aya gasped as the ground started to shake.

“Bala!” Ai yelled, fighting off another memory where she lived as the baby of an overbearing robot. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

“Because you ruined it,” Bala pouted petulantly. “You ruined this universe. I had everything perfect. We were all here. We were all good girls. We were all happy. But you had to keep pressing. Had to keep asking your questions. I worked hard to steer Aya right, worked hard to construct this world secondhand. All you had to do was stay out of it.”

“Bala you … you manipulated me?” Aya struggled with confusing emotions. The ground shook again as the continent the church was on started to lift off into space. Yet the candies in the room didn’t react. “Am I even? Did you put this,” Aya gestured to her onesie and diaper. “In my head too.”

“I mean we all picked up a bit of a diaper fetish at the academy,” Bala looked away shyly. “I just … brought up what was already there. It’s not really manipulation.”

“Yes it is!” Aya whined, having an identity crisis. “Bala you … you.” Aya stammered and as she did a loud explosion rocked the room. In the sky above a meteor had just punched through the moon, chunks of the satellite were raining down on Earth.

“I don’t understand why you’re mad?” Bala was tearing up a little. “We just had to be good little girls, you were having fun with that; you were having fun with me. Right?”

“Bala you just made the Academy again!” Aya said, hoping Bala would understand. A volcano erupted in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and began spewing toxic fumes onto the world. “Why would you go back to that place? Why would you make all of us go back to that place?”

“Because it could have worked,” Bala tried to explain her reasoning. “The Academy couldn’t do it right, but if I’m in charge I can make it work.”

“They tortured us Bala,” Ai countered. “They tortured us for some stupid inane reason.”

“But nobody tortured you here,” Bala spoke desperately. “It worked here. I knew it could work. I knew we could all be happy. It just took a little tweaking. You can see that it worked. People here were happy, it did work.”

“I wasn’t happy,” Ai spat back. “I was miserable for months. No one else was really happy here either. Nobody here would have chosen this. They were making a sacrifice for the greater good.”

“And you did that on purpose,” Aya said, coming to a realization. “The only reason Ai couldn’t talk to Daddy, is because I’m Daddy, and I hadn’t met her.”

“You were the one doing that to me?” Ai said angrily. Before Bala could respond, a river of fire cut through the floor of the room, and for a split second it looked as if Bala might have been cut in half, but she walked out the fire as if nothing had happened other than her clothes being burned off.

“Because I knew you would be selfish,” Bala continued as fire spread in the room they were in. “I knew you would question everything. That you would break my perfect system again.”

“I’m selfish?” Ai said furious. “You’re the selfish one. All I wanted was to be happier. Nothing about the system would change except I’d be happier. We’d all be happier if we weren’t forced to wear diapers all the time. You’re selfish, Bala. Instead of giving people leeway, instead of letting them be free and happy, you’d rather burn the whole thing to the ground.” The roof started to collapse on top of Ai but instead of crushing her it just hovered ominously above her head before disintegrating into a colorful stream of particles.

“Because I need to be a good girl!” Bala said fanatically.

“Says who, Bala?” Aya offered. “I’m telling you that you don’t need to be stuck as an adult baby. You can move on.”

“You just don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bala dismissed Aya.

“I am literally god!” Aya’s voice emanated from every point on the globe at once.

“You are but you obviously need guidance,” Bala picked up the felt blocks in the playpen Aya and Ai were playing with earlier. “That’s why the Academy picked me. I’ll guide you to the perfect world, a world where everyone will be happy and I’ll be a good girl.” As she talked, the felt blocks still in the playpen merged into one ball of light before resolidifying into a metal sphere, which Bala casually held under her arm.

“Bala this is pointless,” Ai pleaded with the girl. “A whole universe is gone, just because you didn’t have your way, and you’re just going to do it again?”

“And I’m going to keep doing it, until it’s perfect. Until we’re all happy.”

“The Academy fucked you up Bala,” The pacifier clip on Ai’s onesie to morphed into a cloud of light before resolidifying as a marker like object made from the same metal as Bala’s ball. “But you’ve got to let this go.”

“You can’t do this Bala,” Aya begged. “You literally can’t do it. You’re chasing perfection. You can’t make everyone happy. Especially not when you’re forcing them to fit your ideas.”

“I can,” Bala denied flatly. The Earth at this point had finally suffered enough damage, and everything was wreathed in fire as its core rapidly expanded and the atmosphere disappeared. The room full of Candies remained on their piece of land, now floating loose in space, seemingly unphased by the literal end of the world. “I have to. That’s what they told me to do, and I’m a good girl. Unlike some of us.” The sun went supernova and a rapidly expanding ball of blue fire lit up the otherwise empty void of space.

“Bala,” Ai sighed in defeat. The whole universe was collapsing, this one was already doomed. Starting over from here was a forgone conclusion, but it all seemed so wasteful to Ai. A whole universe out just gone, and this would continue again and again. All because Bala, an angry and confused child didn’t get exactly her way. Because she was stuck trying to chase a perfection that would never achieve. 

Ai had to marvel at the irony of it all. They were the arcana: demigods, or the closest thing to it; yet even they were victims. Caught up in a literal endless cycle of abuse started by a group of regular people. By one specific person in this case. Maria was probably space dust at the moment, but no doubt she would be back in the next version of reality.

“Not that you’ll listen to me, but I’m going to ask anyway.” Bala was busily turning various parts of the Source in her hand. It clicked and whirred with each one. “Pretty please, don’t fuck the next one up. For the sake of the universe please just accept your fate.”

“Be a baby forever or you’ll blow up the universe,” Ai scoffed. “What wonderful options.”

“It is to me,” Bala shrugged as she finished toying with the Source.

“I’m going to do it again.” Ai said doggedly. “I’m not going to stop. I'm going to keep questioning no matter what you cook up.”

“Well then I guess I’ll see you at the end of the next universe, and we’ll do this song and dance again.” Bala smiled. With a final series of turns Bala slammed a button down on the Source, and in an instant everything ended.

[Personalias]

Holy shit what a crazy deconstruction with so many complex elements and intense emotions!  Well done!  

[Mia Moore]

@bigred0603 Oh my gosh your story is such a beautiful love letter to this series!  I love all the recurring cast and the new roles they took on.  Bala really did just make a whole new Academy, without all the awful parts.  And it's still not enough for Ai. 🥺 Thank you so much for being part of this story. ❤️ 

[bigred0603]

On 3/27/2024 at 4:00 PM, Mia Moore said:

@bigred0603 Oh my gosh your story is such a beautiful love letter to this series!  I love all the recurring cast and the new roles they took on.  Bala really did just make a whole new Academy, without all the awful parts.  And it's still not enough for Ai. 🥺 Thank you so much for being part of this story. ❤️ 

 thank you for letting me be a part of it 😃 It's still a bit surreal that I got to take part in academy so directly and I'm super honored.

[princesstreegirl]

@bigred0603 I love the universe you created for this amazing story. I feel so sorry for Balla, she is so confused and traumatized by the cold room.  I don’t see Ai as a cause for her mental decline because we are all individual’s with free will. She chose to help Ai  in Academy B and now she has to live with the consequences. I really hope Balla can heal from her trauma and become a more mature human being. I really like the idea of Aya’s subconscious being all knowing god of this universe. 
 

@Mia MooreThank you for introducing me to so many Amazing new authors. How do you and the authors plan out the stories? Do you give authors an outline or an idea and let them run with it or how does it all work?

[Mia Moore]

On 3/31/2024 at 12:39 AM, princesstreegirl said:

Thank you for introducing me to so many Amazing new authors. How do you and the authors plan out the stories? Do you give authors an outline or an idea and let them run with it or how does it all work?

I didn't plan out anyone's ideas.  I gave a few guidelines about Ai being the main character and Bala being something of an antagonist.  After everyone wrote their pieces, I looked through and gave a few notes and tried to change a few things to keep some consistency, but the rest was up to them.  

[Lyra Silver]

Academy II
By Lyra Starling

 

"At the end of the world, there will be neither clamor nor calamity, neither echo nor epoch.  It will be mired in silence and sleep, in deliverance and death.  At the end of the world, there will be both patience and purpose, both temperance and time.  Only then will it be graced with eternity, and from eternity, a chance."

                                                    -The Source, in valediction

 

Chapter One

Ai Sinclair heard the crash of glass shattering, and she suddenly realized that she had no idea where she was. Her head felt fuzzy, like her brain had been scooped out and replaced with cotton balls. Thinking felt like wading through a pool of jello.

When she opened her eyes, she was immediately rewarded with a flash of searing, painful light, and she snapped them shut again. Ai rubbed her eyes, wiped the tears away with her fingertips, and—using her hand to shield her face—carefully opened them again.

A frosty fluorescent light sat nestled atop a sea of crisp, white tiles. She puzzled over this as the rest of her senses caught up.

She was lying face-up on what felt like linoleum flooring. Her ears let her know that someone was softly moaning nearby.

Ai propped her elbows against the cold floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. A waifish brown-skinned woman was slumped against the wall. Ai stared blankly before realizing that she could see right up the woman’s bright pastel-blocked jumper skirt and quickly averted her eyes. Even so, she'd definitely caught a glimpse of something white and puffy (and who could blame her, it was right there.)

“Hey,” said Ai, getting to her feet. “Are you all right?” 

Ai took a step and heard something crunch underneath her shoes. She took a closer look at the floor. Glistening glass shards littered the ground like pebbles on a beach. A few orbs, filled with dancing swirls of multicolored gasses, remained intact. She tilted her head up and saw storage racks all around her, filled with other glass orbs. Based on some haphazard absences in the collection, she deduced that some of them were now on the ground beneath her feet.

These are mems,

a hidden part of her remembered, the memory leaping unbidden as

my mentor gestured to the balls he’d put on the table. I picked one up; the glass felt cool underneath my fingertips. I could sense a latent energy within, crackling with potential.

Salman sensed my unasked question and smiled. “They’re crystallized memories, extracted from people's minds.”

My eyes lit up and I opened my mouth, but my mentor gently raised a finger. “Before you ask, no, you can’t use them to pass next week's exam. First of all, your memory is burned up as fuel for the mem, so you wouldn’t remember what you wanted unless you smuggled them in and found a way to absorb them without anybody noticing.”

I frowned. Was I that predictable?

Salman merely laughed, his eyes twinkling with merriment, and raised another finger. "Second, the process of extracting and absorbing mems can be extremely disorienting. For your brain, pulling out an entire memory is disruptive at best, and destructive at worst. That's not even getting into the sheer bleed that can happen on absorption, when, for a moment, you become two souls in one body."

Of course, my mentor wanted to keep me safe, but he sure was making mems sound absolutely dreadful. Still, I felt that itch in my brain, the one I felt whenever an idea got its hooks into me and wouldn't let go, the one that led me to Salman's tutelage in the first place. 

Salman raised a third finger and smiled apologetically. "Third, due to the role the Ashen leyline plays, they can only be made in the great city of Mnemopolis."

“I don’t know,” said the stranger, pulling Ai back to the present. The woman had propped her head up against the wall and was staring at Ai with a worried expression on her face. “Who are you?”

“I’m…” Ai began before trailing off. It should have been an easy question, but her thoughts were a hazy swirl, like reagents in an alchemist’s cauldron.

 “I’m Ai,” she finally said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are either. Come to think of it, I don’t even know where we are.”

The other woman bit her lip. The silence dragged on before she finally opened her mouth again. “I’m Bala, I think. I don't know where we are either." 

Well, that was suboptimal. Ai watched as Bala’s eyes started watering as the girl's lips quivered. She softened.

“Hey, it’s okay. We can figure it out together,” Ai said comfortingly, closing the few steps between her and Bala before bending down to pat her on the shoulder. Bala squeezed Ai’s thighs with her arms and nodded furiously into her slacks.

Ai gestured at the orbs. “You know what these are?” She waited for Bala to nod before continuing. “Let’s absorb some of these mems. They might give us some clues.” Ai couldn't put her finger on why, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Bala nodded.

“I’m going to try this one,” Ai said, pointing to one near where she’d been lying earlier. Bala let go of Ai’s leg as she let the woman make her way to the orange and blue colored mem. Ai turned to see that Bala hadn’t budged a single inch; instead, Bala looked at Ai with a lost puppy expression in her eyes.

“Try one yourself,” urged Ai. Bala nodded and picked up a violet colored mem off the floor. Ai placed her own mem to her forehead, closed her eyes, and concentrated. She heard a subdued crinkle as Bala presumably shifted positions before

I heard keys jangle at the front door, and my kitty ears twitched. My Keeper was home! I tried to get up, but I’d tangled myself up in all of my plush blankets. I mewed in frustration as I wiggled myself loose before pressing my face up against the bars of my cage.

The lock clicked open and I saw Mistress Rosa. My Keeper. She locked eyes with me and I shuddered, feeling my heart thump against my chest. Our Bond hummed, like a taut guitar string that had been plucked. The air between us positively crackled. I subconsciously started rocking my hips back and forth, feeling my diaper rub against my groin in that special way that filled me with tingles.

Mistress Rosa beamed at me. Her smile was as dazzling as a thousand fiery suns. Still, I could sense a tiny undercurrent of worry through our Bond. 

“Hello my Pet,” she said. The honorific made my tail perk up just as effectively now as it had a year ago, when we’d first Bonded. As my Keeper stepped inside, I could see another person right behind her.

“Hey there, crinkle cat,” said Raven. She was wearing a crisply ironed shirt with tiny pineapples printed all over, and in her hand was a soft blue leather leash. As Miss Raven stepped inside, I could see that the other end of the leash was clipped to a collar around a bunny girl with soft auburn hair, who looked at me nervously before her eyes shot back down to the floor.

My ears drooped. I had only been expecting my Keeper, and here she was with her girlfriend, and with her Pet to boot. A knot of anxiety snaked its way through my chest.

“Bala, this is Sophie,” said Mistress Rosa, gesturing at the bunny girl. “She’s Raven’s Pet.”

“Sorry,” Raven apologized. “My sitter bailed on me, so Rosa volunteered to watch Sophie for the week while I’m on my business trip.”

As Raven stood in the doorway with Sophie, allowing the bunny girl to get acclimated with our apartment, Rosa strode over to my cage and bent down.

“Have you been a good girl for me?” she asked as she undid the lock. It would have been easy for me to undo even just a year ago, but Pets lost some motor control as part of the transformation process. Now, as I watched her undo the lock, she might as well have been performing black magic.

I nodded and happily mewed. I’d done some puzzles (Pet Enrichment Toys, they called them in ads) and watched some episodes of Owned at First Sight on the TV. I launched into a rambling summary of the latest plotline as Rosa swung the cage door open to let me crawl out. Once I was outside, Rosa’s hand slid straight to my diaper. I felt her finger slide in under a leg band. I purred and started wiggling my butt, but Rosa merely took her finger back and ruffled my hair.

“Not right now, my horny little Pet,” she said in hushed tones, leaning in close. “I want you to acclimate to Sophie.” 

I made my cutest eyes and whined in the most pathetic way I could, but she platonically patted my butt. “If you’re good, we can play after,” she whispered into my ear. The hairs on my arm stood up and goosebumps prickled my skin. I nodded furiously, causing the bell on my collar to jingle like a Christmas carol.

“Play nice with Sophie,” said Mistress Rosa after what felt like far too little petting. She took Raven into the kitchen, offering her a cup of coffee, leaving me alone with the timid-looking bunny girl.

One of the side effects of becoming a Pet was increased sensitivity. I could smell so many more things that had completely eluded me, back when I’d been a person. Sophie had a strange smell, one that lurked as an undercurrent beneath the lavender-scented baby powder. It was hay, and sunshine, and just...different.

I knew intellectually that it wasn’t her fault; she was just a stranger entering my space. But my hackles were raised nonetheless. It was a basic Pet instinct, as natural as wetting our diapers.

Sophie was standing in the middle of the living room as stiff as a statue. Her fingers nervously played with the hem of her skirt, behind which I could see a thick pink diaper with little orange carrots all over it.

“Mistress Rosa hadn’t mentioned Miss Raven being a Keeper,” I said. “Are you a new Pet?”

Sophie nodded. “We Bonded last week,” she said, embarrassed. “It’s been weird getting used to, you know, everything.”

There was something about that hesitation that felt intoxicating. I wondered if it was anything like what Mistress Rosa felt about me. I liked making Sophie hesitate. I liked keeping her off balance. 

I wanted more.

“Like, your pretty new ears?” I asked, suddenly stepping closer and gently stroking her floppy ears. I watched as she closed her eyes and moaned involuntarily. I felt a feral hunger stir inside me.

“Like, not being a person anymore?” I asked, stroking her cheek, which was as warm and hot as a theater spotlight. I could smell a faint strawberry-scented fragrance coming from her skin.

 “Like, your pretty diapers?”  I asked, darting my hand between her legs and giving her diaper a squeeze. The plastic crinkled satisfyingly beneath my fingers. Sophie’s legs shuddered as she was caught between her human-learned disgust and a strange sense of pleasure.

Some Pets loathed this part of the Transformation the most; even their bodies betrayed the fact that they weren’t independent any longer. Something as simple as potty training would forever be out of their reach. Pets always came around though. They just needed some training to understand what a gift they’d been given.

Sophie shook her head in protest, but her shallow breaths told a different story. She tried stepping away, but I grabbed her shoulders and swung her around to the living room wall, where I pinned her, eliciting a squeak of surprise.

My other hand massaged the front of her diaper. Feeling other Pets’ diapers was almost as good as feeling my own. The padding was so fluffy and thick beneath my fingertips. My palm squeezed, diffusing the pressure all around her crotch. 

“Look at you,” I said, mockingly stern. “You’re wet.” I saw a shudder of humiliation shiver up and down Sophie’s spine. She screwed her mouth up to protest, but I swooped in and kissed her, stealing her words into my lungs. Her lips were soft, so pliable .

She’d be a great Pet for Miss Raven.

My right hand snaked around to the back of her head and cradled her as I pulled her in for a torrent of kisses. Slow, desperate ones, like I wanted to inhale her soul, then furious quick ones, like thieves’ hands darting out and back with pilfered goods, on her soft lips and neck and all over. My left hand slid around to the back of Sophie’s diaper and massaged it. 

I felt Sophie’s leg wrap around me, like a snake around a tree’s trunk. I pressed my diaper up against hers as we crinkled in unison. I felt hot all over, as if my every exhale would let loose a cloud of steam, like a kettle reaching its boiling point.

Sophie’s hand stroked my kitty ears, which twitched blissfully. I briefly saw stars as my breath caught in my throat. It was almost as good as when Rosa gave me head scratches. From deep inside me, a purr sprung forth like water from a geyser. I closed my eyes and pressed my head deeper into her fingers. They gently massaged my scalp. I felt the muscles in my neck and jaw go slack as she gave me gentle scritches.

“Looks like it’s going well,” said Mistress Rosa, breaking the spell I was in. I lifted my lips and licked them. They tasted salty, like the sea.

“Don’t stop on our behalf,” said Miss Raven, her arm snaking around Mistress Rosa’s waist.

Mistress Rosa grinned, full-mouthed, like her joy was bursting out of her body. “It’s nice to see Pets getting along,”  she said, as

Ai came back to the room.

That feeling of desperate lust had been intense. Her cheeks reddened as she thought of how wonderful it had felt to grind against another person, diaper to diaper. How comforting the thickness was between her legs, like a reminder that she belonged to someone. In Ai's life, she had loved and been loved in return, but the bond she’d seen in the mem had transcended what she’d thought possible.

What would it be like to have someone in your life like Mistress Rosa? To know that someone would move worlds for you, who would always have your best interests at heart, who you knew would always keep you as their first priority? To be able to drape that comforting security around you like a warm cloak on a winter’s night, knowing that axiomatically, there was someone out there in the universe who was connected to you on that kind of primal level?

“What did you see?” asked Bala, interrupting Ai’s reverie, an empty glass orb sitting in her palm.

“I think you made that mem,” Ai said hesitantly. “Do the names Rosa, Raven, or Sophie mean anything to you?” She flushed as she spoke Sophie’s name, remembering how sweetly the bunny girl had scratched Bala’s ears.

Bala tapped a finger on her chin. “Not particularly,” she said.

“Sophie was a girl? But also a bunny?” Ai tried. “She was human, but also with rabbit ears and a tail. Though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like that…” Ai’s temples throbbed with pain. 

“Weird." Bala frowned. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that either.”

“What did you see?” Ai asked.

“Umm…” the girl thought aloud, tilting her head to one side. “I think I had your mem.”

Ai did not remember ever making any sort of mem. She wondered if the other girl was lying—but then again, why this whole sweet innocent ingénue charade?

Still, the fact of the matter was that they were both in a strange, sterile room with no memory of why they were there. Ai had to take Bala at face value. She had to trust. Obviously not like the trust that Bala from the mem had with Mistress Rosa, but she had to start somewhere.

They had to work together.

“You were a mage’s apprentice,” Bala continued. “You traveled a very long way to reach...Mnemopolis? I think that’s where we are?”

Ai shrugged. This bleak room could have been in the Elemental Plane of Fire for all she knew, though as Ai wrestled with the idea, she felt like Bala was telling the truth.

Bala spent a few more seconds in thought, then nodded. “Yes, I think that’s right. Because you had someone you really wanted to meet.”

“Who?” Ai asked, though she had a sinking suspicion that she knew the answer already.

“Me,” Bala said.

[Lyra Silver]

Chapter Two

“Why would I want to meet you? I don’t know who you are!” Ai said, taken aback.

“I don’t know either,” Bala retorted. “It’s your mem. It ended before I could figure out why.”

Ai's thoughts raced like the beating of a hummingbird's wings as she tapped her index finger against her lips. Who was this girl in front of her? She gave Bala another look over, but thankfully for Ai's sanity, she hadn't somehow missed cat ears or a tail. She looked just like any normal girl. 

Not to mention, in the mem, Bala had thought she was normal. The diapers, the cages, the animal features—that was just how life was. Ai couldn't find a way to reconcile the two images.

“This is going to sound crazy,” Ai said, “but in the mem you were like somebody’s pet?”

“What, like a fire ferret?” Bala asked.

“No, you were a person. Well, a cat person. And you—” Ai opened her mouth to say more, but she slammed it shut, hesitating. 

Bala looked at Ai with those soft brown eyes. Ai felt a strange kind of maternal instinct; the girl  seemed so helpless. It was up to Ai to be decisive.

“I promise I’m not making this up,” Ai said. “You were excited that your Keeper had come home.”

“Like a girlfriend or something?” asked Bala.

Ai started to reflexively say no, but the words died on her lips. It was more intense, but the overall pattern seemed to fit.

“I think so,” Ai said. “It seemed like she took care of you. You were wearing diapers.”

Unexpectedly, instead of laughing, Bala simply nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. 

If they feel as good as in that mem, I totally see why, Ai thought. A pleasant sensation between her legs caught her off guard.

“It’s part of my job,” Bala explained. “I make medicine to help people feel less topsy-turvy. I make memories of being happy and innocent and cared for and loved, and then they extract those feelings into mems, put them in pills, and give them to sad people.”

“Did I want to find you so I would stop feeling sad?” Ai wondered aloud, though the words felt wrong as she said them.

Bala shook her head. “Why would you need me? You could just go to your local chemist if you wanted the pills.”

They looked at each other, then around the room. 

“I think we should try another mem,” Ai said. “We need more information.”

“If you say so,” Bala shrugged.

“Good girl,” said Ai before she realized how condescending that was. She looked at Bala with a panic, but the girl’s eyes were closed. She had a serene smile on her face.

It seemed like this Bala also enjoyed being talked down to, even without all of the cat ears and other physical changes. Normally, Ai would have found this irritating—she didn't need to take responsibility for two people, she barely had a handle on just herself—but on Bala, it felt...right.

“Okay, go find a mem,” Ai said. She wrapped her fingers around an orange and blue one, pausing long enough to see Bala pick out a new mem of her own before 

the car pulled into its spot and slid smoothly to a halt. “Are you two ready to get some groceries?” asked Mommy, syrupy sweet. She turned off the engine with a flick of her wrist before getting out.

Mommy opened my car door and unbuckled the straps that kept me secured to my car seat. A Little like me would never be able to do that, but Amazons like Mommy were so much stronger. She scooped me up and I buried my face into the crook of her arm. Soft wool caressed my cheeks and gently tickled my ears.

“Uh huh,” I nodded, because I was ready. I was ready for anything she wanted.

“I dunno why you’re asking. I'm not getting anything,” sulked Vivian, crossing her arms, though the pacifier stuck to her lips made it come out more like a mumble of syllables. Last week, Mommy had discovered that Vivian had been purposefully hiding her pacis around the house instead of sucking on them like a good girl. It wasn't anything a quick hypno tape session couldn't fix. Now, as long as a paci was in Vivian's mouth, she couldn't take it out.

“You’re getting stuff, silly,” laughed Mommy as she walked to the other side of the car.

“You’re getting things. I’m just along for the ride.” Vivian was really fussy, and Mommy didn’t deserve any of this. Mommy had told me, though, that Vivian’s maturosis had flared up recently and that it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t behave. I just had to set a good example for her and be the best Little that I could be.

`“You’re not old enough to make good decisions about what you eat,” Mommy said patiently as she picked Vivian up and put the Little on her other hip. Vivian had a sour look on her face, like she’d been sucking on a lemon, and I knew she was biting down some kind of catty remark. Mommy was patient, but even she had her limits. 

I wiggled against Mommy, wanting to press myself into her so closely that our molecules would mingle. Mommy carried us into the store and set us onto a shopping cart. This one had room for two Littles side-by-side. The little plastic baby seat didn’t seem like it would have normally been comfortable, but my padded butt sunk onto it as nicely as my head onto a pillow. My feet dangled in the air, so I idly kicked them while Mommy strapped Vivian in next to me.

As Mommy fought with the buckle, I saw an independent Little walk in. He had that furtive walk that independent Littles always did, eyes swiveling constantly, as if he were afraid that danger lurked behind every corner. The Little, who looked rather smart in his crisp tweed suit, grabbed one of the tiny shopping carts that Amazon children sometimes pushed around before his eyes met Vivian's.

Vivian and the stranger just stared at each other. I watched as the tips of Vivian’s ears turned beet red and she squirmed in her seat, as if she were trying to hide. Her petticoats rustled as her body strained against the straps to no avail. Finally, the man broke eye contact and quickly pushed his cart away, darting ahead of Mommy, who wheeled us around at a much more leisurely pace.

Mommy parked us by the vegetable aisle and started bundling up produce, leaving Vivian and me temporarily alone. Hot tears of frustration snaked down from the corners of Vivian's eyes, which she furiously wiped away with the back of her hands.

“I hate ‘dis,” she mumbled around her pacifier. Her eyes looked longingly at the daikons that Mommy weighed on a scale.  No doubt Vivian was dreaming of eating adult food again, instead of the mashed up baby food that met the nutrition requirements for Littles.

I hated seeing my little sister upset. I knew, as the big sister, that I had to do what I could to help.

“Maybe you should focus on the positives,” I said as Mommy shifted her attention to the bok choy.

Vivian glared at me. The incredulous scowl looked out of place wrapped around a pacifier with a cute cartoon dragon on it. “I’m not going native like you!” she swore angrily. But as Mommy returned and dropped another bag into the cart, her expression reverted to one more placid and neutral.

“You two are being so good,” she chirped. Her words were like drops of liquid sunshine, warming my body and setting it pleasantly aglow. “Especially you, Vivian,” she added, ruffling her hair and gently popping the pacifier out of the Little’s mouth. It dangled on its clip and Mommy went to find the next item on her list.

Vivian’s frown slid back on as suddenly as it had left. “What could possibly be good about losing all of my freedom?” she asked, contorting her face into funny expressions as she stretched her sore jaw.

I knew a lot about this topic. 

“You have to focus on things you can control,” I said. “Just try it. Name just three things that you like about your life now.”

“There isn’t anything,” said Vivian sourly.

“Well, I guess you can just be miserable for the rest of your life,” I huffed. There were limits to my patience, too.

We sat in silence as Mommy returned and pushed us onwards. There was a small hiccup as a Little boy in denim overalls angrily flicked a jar of pickles off the shelf. It hit the floor with a crash, spilling shards of broken glass around the blast radius.

“No!” he yelled, clenching his fists so tightly I could see his knuckles turning white from exertion. “You can’t treat me like this!” continued the Little, though all evidence pointed to the contrary. His Daddy opted to merely raise an eyebrow and wait the tantrum out.

Vivian and I could only stare as the Little continued making a scene. His hands darted to the sides of his diaper, which had a picture of Snowy the Cat on the front. His fingernails desperately scratched at the underside of the tapes, trying to gain purchase. The little muscles on his biceps throbbed as he tried to take the diaper off, but he wasn’t strong enough.

His sobs turned feral with anguish as he thrashed impotently, failing to even disturb the cart he was sitting in. Bystanders murmured to each other as his energy gave out. He lay slumped over in his seat, defeated, quietly whimpering.

“Sounds like someone’s earned a trip to the hypno screen,” his Daddy said cheerfully.

“I’m glad you two are much better behaved,” said Mommy casually, wheeling us to the spice aisle.

As she hunted for anise and fennel, Vivian and I just looked at each other. I saw hesitation behind those fierce brown eyes. There wasn’t any escape. There was only acceptance. Her only choice was whether it would be freely given or coerced out of her.

“I’m glad that I don’t have to go to work anymore,” she said finally, breaking eye contact.

I beamed. “No more worrying about money,” I added on encouragingly. “Mommy makes sure we never go hungry.”

Vivian nodded slowly. “I don’t have to diet,” she said.

“Freedom from choice,” I said. “No more counting calories. No more fretting about your career. Whatever Mommy decides you’re doing is the right thing.”

It was true. At Vivian's first checkup, the doctor had said that Vivian had a few problems with her diet: she had high cholesterol from all the fast food she used to eat. But Mommy kept her on a healthy, Little-appropriate diet, and after even just a few months, her next checkup had gone a lot better.

“And what about something about your diapers?” I knew this was the worst part. It was the thing most Littles had difficulty adjusting to.

“Hell—gosh no,” Vivian said, not quite catching herself in time. Her head swiveled, looking to see if Mommy had overheard, but luckily, Mommy was talking with one of the employees about coupons.

I reached over and gave her diaper a gentle pat. Not the way an Amazon would. Just a friendly pat, between two Littles.

“I bet there’s something. Isn’t it convenient not having to hold it? You can keep playing or watching TV without needing to take a break.”

Vivian scowled. “That’s fine for you, but not for me,” she sulked.

I’d dealt with patients in a past life. I’d been a nurse. Part of what made a good nurse was their bedside manner. It was about being there for someone when they were struggling, even if there wasn’t anything you could do.

“You’re an adopted Little,” I said. “You can’t change that. You’ll be in diapers for the rest of your life. But you can control your attitude. You’ll forever be a Mommy’s little girl, but it’s up to you whether you like it or hate it. Only you can decide that.”

I watched as Vivian mulled over the words. “Focus on the positives,” she mumbled.

“Look what I have for you,” Mommy said in a singsong cadence. She held up a can of condensed milk. “I think my little girls deserve a treat.” She leaned in close and gently kissed Vivian’s forehead. “I know how much you love condensed milk.”

Here we were. Normally, my sister would grit her teeth and take it. In her past life, she could have eaten what she wanted. She didn’t need these handouts. Or, she could accept the gift and find joy in the moment.

I saw a battle rage across Vivian’s face before her eyes softened. “Thanks, Mommy,” she said earnestly, and I’d never been more proud to

realize that the mem was over, a new storm of emotions jolting through Ai like lightning in a bottle.

She was struck by how kind Bala was. She just wanted what was best for Vivian. The love she had with her Mommy was pure and sweet and too big to keep to herself. 

Sharing her joy was the greatest gift Bala could have given Vivian. It was an act of love. Not a romantic love. This went deeper. It was the simple love of happiness, of finding joy in the moment, in the little things.

Ai didn’t think she was a bad person. She knew that everybody was the hero of their own story and that the world was a complex postmodern novel. 

Ai didn’t break any laws and she tried to be a good friend. But she’d never really helped others, either. She didn’t donate money. She didn’t volunteer. It wasn’t convenient. 

The Bala in the mem had such a pure heart that it left a painful ache in Ai’s chest. It was so simple: doing the right thing didn't have to be complicated at all. You could help your friends when they were sad. 

Ai was filled with determination. She’d make sure to help Bala however she could.

“I built this place,” Bala whispered. She stood, brushing her fingers against the metal shelves. “I designed it. The room.”

“Why?” Ai asked. 

“I don’t know," Bala said. "But I know I had to.”

“Did someone make you?” A surge of protectiveness filled Ai. If someone had forced this sweet girl to do anything she didn’t want to—

“No, not exactly,” Bala said. She paused, sifting through her memory of a memory. Ai knew that

“Even with a mem,” Salman said as I stared, transfixed by the swirling colors in the palm of my mentor's hand, “you can’t really experience it the same way twice. You’re not the same person that you were when you made the mem. You can’t help but interpret everything through the you of the present.”

“So, what’s the point then?” I asked. There sure seemed to be a lot of limitations on these things! Though it explained why they weren’t in widespread use.

“You just have to remember,” Salman explained, “that what you’re seeing is a memory of a memory. Just as you cannot step in the same stream twice, because your presence irreversibly changes the flow of the water, you imprint yourself onto the mem as much as it does on you.”

I

blinked as she realized that Bala had started talking. Ai caught the tail end of the sentence: "...so I had to for myself." She let go of the memory and anchored herself back in the present.

"Because..." Bala continued haltingly, "well...these mems were important to me. I knew that I couldn't lose them."

“So this is like a library?” Ai asked.

“I think so. I put my mems here for safekeeping, in case I ever needed them again.”

"That doesn't make any sense," Ai snapped in frustration. "Look around. Do you see any labels?" She gestured at the silent walls all around them. "That's not even taking into account the fact that you have one of my mems. It doesn't fit."

“I dunno,” sulked Bala. “I’m just telling you what I saw in the mem. I’d just finished extracting out the last mem. I must have extracted even the memory of making this place, because I only had vague feelings. I’d designed this place carefully. It was supposed to be a secret. So I put the last mem in its place on the shelf, took one last look around, and then I left. I sealed the door shut behind me. That's all I know.” The girl puffed out her cheeks in frustration.

Guilt surfaced, leaving a bitter taste on Ai’s tongue. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was criticizing. I thought you were very helpful. I’m just trying to figure out why we’re here, that’s all. Okay?”

Bala nodded, but her face told a different story.

“Can I give you a hug?” Ai asked. She waited for the girl to nod before she stepped in and squeezed. Bala’s small body folded itself to Ai’s curves, like they had been made for each other. Ai could feel the telltale thickness of what she now knew to be a diaper around Bala’s hips as the girl melted in her arms.

Ai closed her eyes. Bala smelled softly of lavender and sweetness. It felt oddly nostalgic.

The only thing that was missing, thought Ai, was a diaper of her own.

[Lyra Silver]

Chapter Three

“Okay,” Ai said, trying to piece together everything she knew so far. “So you made this place. You had mems that you didn’t want to lose, but you didn’t want to have those memories either.”

“Uh huh,” Bala said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here. I didn’t get the sense that I was expecting visitors.”

“I got another one of your mems,” Ai said, hoping to see how this piece fit into the puzzle. “But this time, you were…tiny? There were people you called Amazons. You were child-sized? Or maybe you were normal sized and they were giants?”

“That sounds nice,” Bala said wistfully. “I bet it’d help me at my job a lot.”

“But you didn’t have any pet stuff,” Ai pressed. “Even just one of these mems was hard to fit into the big picture. But now we have two that don’t make any sense.”

Bala grimaced and rubbed her temples with her fingers. “Maybe it’s not me,” she said. “Maybe these are just people who thought they were me.”

Ai shook her head. “That still doesn’t explain the cat ears or the wacky sizes,” she said. “It’s almost like an alternate dimension.”

“That sounds…kind of right,” Bala said. “Maybe I astral projected into alternate versions of myself? So these would be mems of what I’d seen?”

It was definitely possible. Augurs worked by witnessing timelines close enough to reality to have predictive power. If Bala were an augur, then the mems would just be visions of far-fetched, improbable timelines. 

But too many variables didn’t add up. Augury was an extremely rare gift to begin with. And even if Bala were an augur, what would she have to gain from making and then discarding these mems? It didn’t even sound like she kept a meta-mem: a memory of an index that she could load into her brain and use as a reference point. And with all the secrecy, how did Ai find out who Bala was in the first place?

“I think we have to keep going,” Ai said. 

Bala nodded.

Ai picked a mem off of a shelf this time. “Here goes,” she said, as

Juniper begged, her voice shaky. “Don’t make me do this. Anything but this.” The girl wore a bright blue party dress, which I thought really brought out the color of her eyes. Right now, they were sparkling cerulean seas, glistening with tears. I could see a pristine white diaper peeking out below, gently pushing her thighs apart.

I wanted to tell her so many things. That everybody in the facility bargained, even if they swore they wouldn’t. That it had never changed anyone’s mind. That it truly only made it worse, made their powerlessness sink in even deeper. That it was what they wanted, all along—because the bigger the fall, the more innocence they could extract from you.

But she wasn’t talking to me. Why would she? There was no reason for a human to talk to a Doll, unless you were giving it orders.

You couldn't bargain with a Doll, but you could bargain with a Doll's Master. Right now, that was Chetna, a dark-skinned Suryadeshi who remembered all of her coworkers' children's names and never forgot a birthday. Technically, she was just borrowing me from the company that she worked for.

When I was still alive, I'd signed a piece of parchment that bound my soul to servitude after my death in exchange for paying off my student loans. It was this contract that kept me tethered to the mortal realm. Until I paid off my debt, I would be bound to my artificial body, kept together by eldritch magitech. 

In other words, I was a Doll—nothing more than a piece of property.

My Master laughed derisively. “You don’t have a choice,” she said, her voice full of syrupy sweet venom, like poisoned honey. Her scrubs were a serene light pink, soft and sweet like everything else in the bedroom.

Chetna was vegetarian. She had two cats and a polar dog and volunteered at a food bank in the evenings. She was sweet to her coworkers and took good care of me.

I liked her. She was a good Master. Not every Doll got to choose their Master.

Juniper clutched her stomach as another spasm of pain hit her. Her forehead glistened with sweat. “There’s been a mistake,” she tried bargaining. I could hear her diaper rustle beneath her skirts as she paced around her room. Chetna and I stood by the door, keeping her caged.

“Why can’t you be more like Bala here?” Chetna asked. She patted my head. Though I didn’t have skin or nerves, through the wonders of magitech, I could still feel her warm hand gently ruffling my artificial hair. Frissons of joy raced down my spine, spreading happy tingles in their wake.

Chetna flipped up the hem of my maid outfit, revealing my puffy white diaper. “She wears her diapers without fussing,” she said. Warm pride blossomed in me like a spark lighting a fire as Chetna dug her fingers into my padding. The sound of crinkling plastic lit up the room like little fireworks exploding. If I’d still had a heart, it would have thumped along in time, but instead, my positronic core kept quietly humming.

Juniper grunted as her knees buckled beneath her. She put a hand on the wall, right next to her diaper training chart, which was full of yellow frowny faces, and steadied herself.

“She’s a Doll,” Juniper said, her voice strained. “She doesn’t have a choice.”

I truly didn’t. Even my body was leased from a corporation. I was well and truly owned by another. On the outside, I almost looked human.

But I wasn’t. Not anymore.

“Neither do you.” Chetna crossed her arms.

“She’s not the one who has to use them,” Juniper spat.

“That’s where you’re different,” Chetna laughed. “She wears them because she’s a good girl who does what she’s told. You’re wearing diapers because you need them.”

Juniper’s face was red with exertion. I saw a small sweat stain on the back of her pretty dress. I’d have to wash that out later. Everybody deserved soft, pretty clothes. Even brats like Juniper.

“I—obviously—don’t—need—diapers,” Juniper grunted.

“You don’t?” Chetna asked, eyes wide with mock surprise. “Then I bet you can show me what a big, clever girl you are by going potty right now.”

I could see a vein bulge from Juniper’s neck from her clenching her jaw. The condescension was like strident nails across a chalkboard.

“That’s what I want to do,” she said, trying to avoid being baited into “throwing a tantrum”, which had happened yesterday.

“So use your diapers and show me how much control you have,” Chetna said reasonably.

Another paroxysm of pain. It was seconds before Juniper could respond. “How does that make any sense?” she finally asked.

“Little girls have accidents,” Chetna said, as if the logic should have been obvious. “But a big girl can go on purpose. So be quiet and go like a good girl, and I’ll treat you like a big girl. I'll promise not to put you in another diaper today."” 

There it was. Hope. The most dangerous of all emotions. It was a tiny sliver, a microscopic speck of dust, but it was what Juniper had.

“Fine,” Juniper said, accepting what little she could get. She couldn’t rage against biology forever. She went to a corner, the one with a pile of stuffed animals, and squatted down, deliberately facing away from us. I knew that, despite everything, she would feel our eyes burning holes on her back. Even basic privacy for one of the most fundamental acts a human could do was no longer hers.

The ersatz child grunted, finally letting go.

There was an elegance to Chetna’s methods. She made it Juniper’s choice. She’d have to live knowing that she’d chose this, chose to be complicit in her treatment. But that was a problem for future Juniper. Current Juniper had her own set of problems. Chetna walked forward, giving me a brisk nod to let me know that I should tag along. We stood on either side of the girl, like bodyguards.

Juniper squeezed her eyes shut. Biology warred with her base instincts and her body recoiled at the idea of voluntarily messing herself. Still, in the end, she was no match for the laws of nature. She groaned with a perverse pleasure as she pushed her mess out into her diapers.

I knew from experience what Juniper must have been feeling. First, warmth from her bladder letting go. Then, further back, another feeling, strangely hot against her skin. The mess would press up against the diaper, keeping it snug against her as evidence for what she’d done. 

I saw tears form in Juniper’s eyes. She would be feeling an aching sense of relief, which would only make her shame all the stronger.

Finally, when it was done, Juniper gingerly stood back up. I knew that she’d be feeling an unfamiliar weight in the seat of her diaper, but one she would grow ever more intimately acquainted with as time went on. This time, I could see her diaper sagging a bit between her thighs. Juniper wrinkled her nose with disgust.

“Great job, Junebug!” said Chetna, clapping excitedly. If the smell bothered her, she didn’t show it. It was part of the normalization training.

“Okay,” Juniper said shakily, “get me out of this.”

“Why would I do that, sweetie?” Chetna asked.

“I did what you wanted,” Juniper said, trying to keep her voice even.

Chetna laughed. “And you did such a good job!”

“So get me out of this thing,” Juniper said.

“I promised that I wouldn’t put you into another diaper today,” said Chetna. “So I’ll change you tomorrow.”

“You bitch,” she swore. “That’s not what I agreed to.”

Chetna clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “First, your language, and second, not remembering the deal I made with you? Maybe you are just a little girl after all.” She turned to me and smiled. “Bala, give Juniper a spanking. I think twenty should suffice.”

The Command rang through my body like a bell. As the reverberation slowed, I felt my control recede out of my limbs, like waves on a beach returning to the sea.

Any adult could Command a Doll using its Name. After all, Names had power. But Juniper was no longer legally an adult. She could yell my name until her throat went hoarse, but it would be as effective as ordering the tides to cease. 

Juniper’s eyes widened with fear. I knew she could see the telltale dead-eyed look of a Doll in the thrall of a Command on my face. Her legs tensed before suddenly bursting into motion, like a gazelle on the run. I watched as my hand darted out and grabbed her upper arm. My artificial limbs dug into her skin, precisely enough to hold her in place, without breaking any bones. It would have been an impressive feat, if I had been in control. 

The girl tugged against me, but it was like trying to shove a building with her hands. One of her fists slammed into my chest, but it didn’t register to me as more than a light thump. The girl yelped in pain and gingerly held her hand up. I could see the beginnings of a bruise starting to form.

I dragged her across the plush floor to the rocking chair. I sat down and threw her over my lap with one smooth motion. I was a passenger in my own body. It was freeing, to not have to think about what to do. I wished for the thousandth time that I could exist forever in this state of bliss.

One of my arms pressed on Juniper’s back, holding her in place. My other arm carefully flipped her skirt up, exposing her thick diaper to the room.

“Please,” she pled. But a Command was a Command.

My arm suddenly spanked her with the explosive force of a firework. The thump echoed in the tiny room as Juniper yelped. I could feel how the impact pressed her mess into her. It must have been humiliating for her.

She wasn’t an adult woman. She didn’t have rights or freedom. No, she was now mere capital, just one of the inputs to the hugely complicated eldritch entity we called a megacorporation. Some people hated it. But I didn't mind being a cog. I knew that I had my place.

Juniper howled as I rained spanks onto her bottom. The thickness of the diaper didn’t do enough to ameliorate the force of my inhuman blows. Her dignity flowed out of her in torrents of tears, dripping down her cheeks and onto the floor. 

After twenty blows, I felt the magical force of the Command loosen. It was always disorienting to suddenly regain control. It was like stepping onto a still escalator—the lurch caught me off guard. Juniper sobbed in my lap, nothing more than a messy little girl.

Finally, Chetna spoke, breaking the silence. “I didn’t hear any counting, young lady,” she said. “A big girl knows how to count. I think twenty more.”

Juniper yelped with fear, but I held her firmly in place as Chetna leaned in.

“Bala, give twenty more spanks. On the thighs, this time.”

Another thump of magical power coursed through me. Juniper thrashed as best as she could, but I relaxed as my hand rose

and realized that Ai was back in the real world. She blinked. She was in absolutely no mood to move.

Ai had never been great at mindfulness. Her thoughts buzzed around constantly, refusing to settle. But all that powerlessness stemmed from fretting about things outside her control. According to the mem, it was in accepting your helplessness that truly set you free.

In that mem, Bala had freedom from morality. From doing the right or wrong thing. The gulf between what she would normally do and what she was Commanded to do was a vast incomprehensible ocean.

Being in Bala's body had felt rapturous. Ai wasn't religious, but she thought she understood a little better that feeling of fervent devotion. Each movement under that Command had felt divinely guided.

Now Ai's body felt uncomfortably loose. She didn't have anything solid to grasp. What should she do? How should she hold her body? Her clothes scratched against her skin as she thought about breathing, which had been so automatic before. Now, every rise and fall of her chest caught her attention.

Freedom was dangerous. Freedom was the option to be wrong. For a moment, Ai had tasted the dizzying liberty of subjugation, and she wanted more.

Was it wrong? Dolls didn’t have any choices. They couldn’t be held culpable. They were instruments, just tools wielded by others. Dolls couldn’t be wrong. Dolls could just be. 

Bala looked at Ai, wide-eyed. Her face had gone pale.

“I know why you’re here,” she said, pointing a shaky finger at me.

“Why?” Ai asked.

Bala spoke carefully, unsure of the implications. “I had your mem,” she said. “You were at home—I don’t know where—”

“Concordium,” interrupted Ai, the memory of 

spotting the tops of the Twin Spires peak up over the horizon as the boat sailed on, towards the birthplace of Oathcraft, a long, long way from the dusty island that I had been born on 

leaping to her mind.

Bala nodded. "You were walking home from work when a bard caught your ear. She was playing a song on the lute..." She closed her eyes and hummed a melody. The corner of Ai's mouth curled up into a smile. It was an old song, from the island. She hadn't heard it in years.

Bala nodded. "The song made you happy, but also kind of sad," Bala continued. "You gave her ten...aurums, I think you called them. She burst into happy tears and started up another tune. You stayed and listened and danced, and when you finally left, she pressed a mem into your hand."

The girl swallowed, catching her breath. “You raced home to see what it could be. When you absorbed it, you saw…” She trailed off.

“What?” Ai asked, breathless with anticipation.

Bala's mouth twisted into a strange expression. “Us meeting for the first time."

[Lyra Silver]

Chapter Four

Ai paced the room, thinking furiously. Every so often, glass would crunch underneath her shoes.

“What was on the mem?’ she asked.

“It wasn’t entirely clear,” said Bala. "You know how it is with mems within mems. They

"won't work either," Salman laughed. "Or at least, not the way you want. Your brain is already playing a mem; it simply can't properly handle the complexity of a nested mem."

I sighed. I'd been

all alone in a very cold place,” Bala continued. “It chilled my bones to the core. Then I came to a soft, warm place and I saw you there.”

Ai simply nodded, enraptured.

“I’d learned how to be a good girl,” Bala said abstractly, “and I saw you and I was excited because I knew you were a good girl too and we were going to be friends…”  She trailed off. 

If the last two mems had been any indication, Bala would have also been an overgrown baby. For some reason, this seemed to be a constant across all the mems. But if Ai were also a “good girl”, then did that mean…

Ai held her hands together and played with her fingers, imagining what that would be like. To have someone like Rosa, who would unconditionally love her. To embody goodness, like how Bala helped Vivian. And to know that she could be blameless, like a Doll, unable to do any wrong, and perfect by existing.

“Maybe we’re friends,” Ai suggested. “Each of the mems we've seen had people important to you in them. You might be here putting away mems of me...”

It seemed sad. What was the point of living if you didn’t remember it? Mems were wonderful because you could share a slice of your lived experience. You didn’t have to just imagine walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins; you could just go do it.

“Would that mean that we should stop looking at these mems?” Bala wondered anxiously. “If I’m not supposed to know what's on them, then I should stop…” She looked at the empty mem in her hand doubtfully, then at the wreckage surrounding them.

Ai opened her mouth to agree. If she thought about it, even if she didn't understand why, it was pretty clear that Bala hadn't wanted these mems. The proper thing to do was to respect that and to leave her to...whatever it was that she was doing. But before she could say anything, she was caught up in the rush of new feelings that were coursing through her body like a raging river.

Each mem had one thing in common, beyond just being Bala's. Whether it was

Rosa

or

Chetna

or even

Mommy,

Bala always had someone taking care of her. All of Ai's past relationships were shallow puddles compared to the depth of security and comfort each of Bala's partners had in those mems.

It wasn't so wrong to want that, right? The desire to love and be loved—it was just human nature. Just as Bala had felt at peace in the thrall of a Command, Ai felt secure within the four walls of this room. It was just her, and Bala, and a trove of mems to enjoy.

What was waiting for her outside? Her parents had scarcely been in the ground for a week before she'd fled to Concordium. Salman and her weren't on speaking terms anymore.

Ai felt her hand inching towards a dark green and red mem on the shelf by her. She watched passively as she picked it up and idly rolled it around in her fingers.

What was the harm in these mems? One more couldn't hurt. Maybe if she saw enough mems, she'd find out how Bala had gotten into these relationships. Then she could leave. It wouldn't hurt anyone, right?

So what came out her mouth instead was: "We'd better keep looking just to be sure." Before she could change her mind, she

 put my stickers all over the coloring book. It was what the grownup in the pink scrubs told me to do while we waited for someone special to arrive. The rhythm was hypnotic.

Peel.

Stick.

Peel.

Stick.

Suddenly, a woman’s voice rang out. 

“Do you remember me?” she asked. I looked up to see a brown-haired woman with glasses and my heart skipped a beat. 

Not because of her. No, it was because she reminded me of Her.

I nodded.

“What do you remember?” she asked. I felt the tug of the rubber teat slide against my mouth as she pulled my pacifier out.

“You took Ai away, an’ I went to the Cold Room,” I said, sticking a fairy sticker haphazardly onto the corner of the page as I shuddered.

It had been bad enough the first time. But the second? To be thrown back into the sea of samsara, knowing that it was your own fault for trusting—

“Why did I do that?” asked the grownup, interrupting my thoughts. 

I didn’t mind though. It was an easy question.“‘Cuz you did,” I said simply. 

The woman leaned in just a little bit. “Do you think it’s my fault you went to the Cold Room?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nuh uh. It’s Ai’s fault. ‘Cuz she made my choices, an’ that’s not nice.” I kept putting stickers on the page, but now my fingers hurt from jabbing them onto the paper and hitting the table beneath me. It was better than biting my nails, but not by much.

“She made your choices?” the woman asked. “But I didn’t?”

More simple questions. I didn’t mind, though. I liked talking to grownups, because they said what they wanted from me, and then I could give it to them.

“You just did a thing you did. But she tricked me to do somethin’ I didn’t wanna do,” I said, angrily putting a panda on on top of the fairy. 

“What did you want to do?” asked the woman.

I blinked away hot tears. “I wanted to be a good girl.” Shame welled up inside of me.

The thing about being good was that you could be good for days and days and days, but it never really erased when you were bad. No matter what I did ever since, I’d never be able to escape the fact that on the day I helped Ai, I’d been a bad girl.

“What do you want now?” asked the grownup, interrupting my thoughts.

“To be a good girl, still,” I said. Even if I couldn’t erase the stain of my sin, I could blot it out with countless other good actions, like water diluting a poison.

“What are you making?” she continued. Her voice sounded oddly curious, as if she were carefully weighing my answers. I didn’t know what scale she was using, but I hoped they were satisfactory.

“Nothin’,” I responded. “Just doin’ it ‘cuz I wanna.” I’d gotten changed into a fresh diaper, and then put in this room. It was something to do.

“What if I told you to stop?”

I could hear the unspoken intent. Grownups didn’t always say what they meant. You had to be a good listener sometimes. So I closed my book and looked up at her. Her eyes had an odd twinkle in them.

“You don’t want to do your stickers anymore?” She gestured at the book.

I shook my head. “I wanna be a good girl,” I responded.

In response, the woman simply tilted her head to the side. “I’m not tricking you like Ai did?”

“No,” I said immediately. “Because this is what I want.” Because I wanted to want what grownups wanted from me. It was only right.

Behind her glasses, I saw her eyes harden. She seemed to have decided something. “Bala, I have a request,” she asked.

Perfect. I loved when grownups asked me to do things, because then I could do them and be a good girl.

I watched as she reached into her purse and pulled out a gun, which shone dangerously in the harsh ceiling light.

“Wait! Miss Porter!” The other grownup stepped forward, but Miss Porter merely held a hand up, the one that wasn’t holding the gun. She turned to me and held the firearm in the palm of her hand, like it was a baby bird she’d picked up.

“Take this gun, point it at yourself, and pull the trigger,” she said.

Easy enough. It was like any other request. I picked the pistol up, feeling how cool the metal felt against my hand. Then, without a second thought, I put the barrel against the side of my head and pulled the trigger

with a click that seemed to ring as loudly as any gunshot. Ai felt herself wrenched back into the real world. It took a bit to fully reorient herself, and when she did, she discovered that her cheeks were damp. She’d been crying.

That feeling of complete disregard for her own safety—it was terrifying. Not because it was strong, or borne from self-hatred, or anything. Those, Ai had more experience with. She knew what it was like to dislike herself, to be something she hated. Even depression made sense to her. Some days, Ai woke up, and the world would be gray and indistinct, like her body would be in the room while her mind was elsewhere.

But Bala hadn’t thought about herself. She hadn’t wanted to hurt herself. She hadn’t worried about any consequences. No, it was simply that her own self didn’t have a place in the world. A grownup had told her to do something, so she did it. It was as simple as that.

She’d said it was Ai’s fault. Could that be possible? Ai couldn’t believe it. 

She stepped towards Bala instinctively to give the girl a hug, but instead Bala pressed her palms into Ai’s chest and pushed the girl away. Ai staggered back, crushing a mem underfoot before she regained her balance.

“Bala, what’s wrong?” Ai asked. The girl’s eyes were fearful, as if she’d swallowed some sort of bitter truth.

“Shut up,” Bala said, reaching for a cloudy cerulean mem. Ai watched as the girl picked the glass orb up and held it against her forehead. Bala focused, and the blue cloud pulsed before suddenly rushing straight into Bala’s forehead. 

Bala’s eyes unfocused as she relived the mem, then returned to consciousness with a stutter. It had been mere seconds, though each one had seemed to stretch like taffy. An instant later, Bala's eyes suddenly narrowed. Her face screamed suspicion, like an alarm bell had been tripped.

She grabbed another mem, as if hoping to confirm some kind of hypothesis. Ai waited for her to unfocus, then darted over, hoping to put a mem, any mem, in her mind. The gas twisted in the air before suddenly darting towards Ai as

I was returning to the nest with Mother, the rat clutched in my talons a symbol of my success. My brood siblings were going to hatch today, and Mother had allowed me the honor of feeding them their first meal.

As the wind changed directions, I spotted the weathered oak tree and turned, cutting out of the updraft and gently descending. After all this time, I still had never taken the feeling of flying for granted. I made my way through the knotted, tangled branches that protected our nest from the weather when my blood turned to ice.

Two slate-blue eggs were nestled together inside the nest, like the sky on a frosty winter’s night. My brood siblings. The third egg, though, was being pushed out over the lip by an ugly gray-feathered bird, the hapless avian embryo inside utterly unaware of its impending fate.

The intruder turned, having heard the rustling of the branches as I’d entered, and despite all odds, I found myself growing even more furious. White hot rage filled me as spots danced in my vision.

It was Ai. That bitch had ruined everything again.

Ai felt herself ejected from the mem like a cannonball out of a musket. Her heart was hammering a furious beat in the gorge of her throat. 

That kind of unadulterated hatred felt so out of place. The diapered girl in front of Ai shouldn’t have been able to hold such a vile emotion.

She turned to look at Bala, who was now glaring falchions into Ai.

“So we’re here again,” she said contemptuously. “You’ve decided, once again, to be a bad girl and ruin everything.” Her hand gestured at the room. The wrecked mems seemed to be wordlessly taunting Ai. No matter what she pretended, some things had been destroyed, even if she'd had the best intentions.

Ai couldn’t handle Bala’s baleful gaze. Her eyes instead watched the hypnotic patterns of the mems swirling around, which looped around and around like the contortions in her heart.

“That can’t be true,” Ai said. She didn’t think she was the kind of person who would do something like that. 

“Weren’t you happy?” Bala asked, almost pleading. The erratic mood shifts were disorienting. “Weren’t you living a normal life? I tried not to single you out when I made this universe.” Bala’s voice rang hollow, like a forgotten melody from a broken music box.

“I was,” Ai said. She wasn’t lying.

“I didn’t want to think about you anymore,” Bala sighed. “We’ve done this so many fucking times. I thought maybe if I could just forget you even existed, forget all the bad things that happened, that we could just live our lives separately. I wouldn’t mind being the bigger person if it meant that I could be free from you,” she concluded, her mouth twisting into an ironic smile.

Ai shook her head. “Being a bigger person doesn’t mean tossing out the past completely,” she protested.

“Why not?” asked Bala, who had begun quietly crying.

“What’s the point of it all if we don’t remember anything?” Ai challenged. “When we’re done, it’s not the events we hold onto, but the memories. No memories means no change means things may as well have never happened." 

“I don’t care about all that,” Bala said. “I just want everybody to be happy.”

Ai frowned. “This isn’t the way to do it. I don’t know what exactly is happening, but it looks like I always do something that makes you upset. Expecting to be happy all the time isn’t possible.”

“Think carefully about what you’re saying,” Bala warned, her voice dangerously soft, like a gauntlet encased in velvet. “You don't have to be in the next world.”

Ai shook her head furiously. “If you could have gotten rid of me, you would have,” she said. 

Bala sighed. “Fuck you,” she said, answering the question indirectly.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ai said, trying to stay reasonable. “I know how you feel. Like, really know. I’ve felt what you felt, thought what you thought. I can understand where you’re coming from, just like how, if I shared my mems with you, you could understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

Bala just kept staring, a stony expression glued on her face.

“I know I did some things that hurt you,” Ai pled. “But how can you expect me to stop if I don’t remember doing it? People can’t grow or change or learn if they can’t retain anything. You’re doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.”

“I don’t want to grow,” Bala said. “I want my happy ending. And this isn’t it.”

“Wait—” Ai yelled. She reached a hand out to Bala, but as her fingers dangled in the air, the world ████████

[Mia Moore]

@Lyra Silver - Thank you so much for your addition to Academy Works!  I think this is one of the most creative things I've ever read.  You get so much story about Ai and Bala in such a small space - a single room.  But with the memories you still get to give the audience all those nice sexy moments.  I wish I came up with the idea myself.  And using the moment with Bala and Maria as a memory?  So cruel!  But maybe Ai will be able to have more empathy for Bala now, instead of seeing her as a villain?

Anyway, thanks so much again!  I think this is a fantastic addition to the series. ❤️

~Mia~

[Operational Systems]

Everyone has done an amazing job with their own twists on this.  It feels like everyone just decided to take their wildest ideas and kick them up to an extreme level.  A dangerous proposition, but here it works well.

[princesstreegirl]

@Lyra Silver

i love the creative universes you took AI and Balq into! I especially loved the pet play chapter. For some reason that was the most sensual erotic  thing I’ve read in my life. There was something so erotic about two people forming an intimate bond win such sensory  detail. I definitely want to travel to the world of the Amazons and be hypnotized…does the hypnosis work on the longing desire to be a good baby? The morality and freedom from Will power was a fantastic read. I loved the absence of moral choices and how liberating it might feel, something I never considered. Was this idea inspired by your own fantasies of doll play or a friends? Again I hope Balla comes to terms that her actions in academy B were her own and that she has free will and the ability to change into a personal. Who can learn from their mistake. Funny how she can know the meaning of Samsara yet not fully apply it to her own life. Samsara is the beauty of life. The ability to live through periods of joy and unhappiness with the knowledge of the ever constant change in one’s life from one to another. If only Balla could hear a podcast hosted by a shark and a space princesses who could explain all this to her. Thank you for the amazing read. I look forward to reading more of your works!!

@Mia Moore Way to go in picking another amazing author!! Sophie and Puddkng’s first chapters were amazing but some how  the board wouldn’t let me post. I’ve loved every author’s story so far!! I can’t wait to read more!!

[Lyra Silver]

On 3/19/2024 at 9:13 AM, FloridaKid said:

This is really cool. I love how all of you have worked together to weave this tale. So many possibilities and connections. @Personalias: I love your writing, and your contribution to the Academy series is stellar. I am curious, though. Is the use of Luna an intentional nod to the @Lyra Silver story of the same name? There are too many parallels for it to be coincidence. I love that story and it fits perfectly here. 

I was extremely honored to have the antagonist of that Academy II segment be named after Luna! It was a no-brainer to agree  to it 🙂 

On 4/1/2024 at 3:32 PM, Mia Moore said:

@Lyra Silver - Thank you so much for your addition to Academy Works!  I think this is one of the most creative things I've ever read.  You get so much story about Ai and Bala in such a small space - a single room.  But with the memories you still get to give the audience all those nice sexy moments.  I wish I came up with the idea myself.  And using the moment with Bala and Maria as a memory?  So cruel!  But maybe Ai will be able to have more empathy for Bala now, instead of seeing her as a villain?

Anyway, thanks so much again!  I think this is a fantastic addition to the series. ❤️

~Mia~

Thank you so much! I felt like the memories were a nice way to have my cake and to eat it too—just to write a bunch of flash fiction set in wildly disparate universes, but linking them together so it made sense.

I'm very very flattered to have gotten a chance to contribute to the Academy lore. It's one of my favorite series ever and it's real Ascended Fangirl vibes.

On 4/1/2024 at 5:52 PM, Operational Systems said:

Everyone has done an amazing job with their own twists on this.  It feels like everyone just decided to take their wildest ideas and kick them up to an extreme level.  A dangerous proposition, but here it works well.

I was worried that my segment wouldn't hold together! It's pretty high-concept, even for me. I'm super happy to hear that it worked for you though!

On 4/3/2024 at 12:15 AM, princesstreegirl said:

@Lyra Silver

i love the creative universes you took AI and Balq into! I especially loved the pet play chapter. For some reason that was the most sensual erotic  thing I’ve read in my life. There was something so erotic about two people forming an intimate bond win such sensory  detail. I definitely want to travel to the world of the Amazons and be hypnotized…does the hypnosis work on the longing desire to be a good baby? The morality and freedom from Will power was a fantastic read. I loved the absence of moral choices and how liberating it might feel, something I never considered. Was this idea inspired by your own fantasies of doll play or a friends? Again I hope Balla comes to terms that her actions in academy B were her own and that she has free will and the ability to change into a personal. Who can learn from their mistake. Funny how she can know the meaning of Samsara yet not fully apply it to her own life. Samsara is the beauty of life. The ability to live through periods of joy and unhappiness with the knowledge of the ever constant change in one’s life from one to another. If only Balla could hear a podcast hosted by a shark and a space princesses who could explain all this to her. Thank you for the amazing read. I look forward to reading more of your works!!

@Mia Moore Way to go in picking another amazing author!! Sophie and Puddkng’s first chapters were amazing but some how  the board wouldn’t let me post. I’ve loved every author’s story so far!! I can’t wait to read more!!

I think a lot of people's favorites are going to be that petplay one. I still get self-conscious writing smutty scenes, but I thought it would be a good way to try and flex some muscles and expand my comfort zone. If you liked that taste and want more, it's actually a fanfiction set in @bbykimmy's Keeperverse! Though, like with the Diaper Dimension, my little snippet has its own twists on the worldspace. It's the piece of writing that got me into petplay, if you need any bona fides.

The Dollverse story is secretly also a fanfiction (self-fanfiction?)! I'm currently working on a story set in that universe, though I don't want to say too much right now. I'm not specifically super into doll stuff, but I have close friends who are, and adding diapers to anything makes me understand it a little better. I'm really flattered to hear that it really resonated—that feeling of losing culpability can be intoxicating if you let it go too far!

[PeculiarChangeling]

Academy II
By Peculiar Changeling

"At the end of the world, there will be neither clamor nor calamity, neither echo nor epoch.  It will be mired in silence and sleep, in deliverance and death.  At the end of the world, there will be both patience and purpose, both temperance and time.  Only then will it be graced with eternity, and from eternity, a chance."

                                                    -The Source, in valediction

 

Chapter One

Ai blinks, but the panic doesn’t set in until several seconds pass. 

(Where am I?) 

Sometimes, in the past, she’d woken up in an unfamiliar place. It always disoriented her, struggling in a foreign environment to take it all in at once. Having to piece together her arrival: how she’d gotten there, where she was, all while her body was still sleep-lagged and not fully awake. This isn’t like waking up.

She had blinked once and found herself in a new place, fully aware, and the assault on her senses came from all directions. She takes it in, but it’s as though her senses are coming on one at a time, discovering pieces of her surroundings before she can understand the whole. 

Her arms are crossed over her chest–no, they’re bound over her chest, held down in a tight self-hug, like she’d put on a baggy jacket and had the sleeves tied together like a pretzel around her body. Though Ai had never worn a straightjacket before, she deduces what’s pinning her arms down before she can even see it.

Warmth spreads over her crotch, and again it takes her a couple tries to guess why. 

(Did I spill something? No. Blood? Also no. It’s like–ah, I’m peeing.)

That too feels wrong–the warmth doesn’t spread down her thighs, nothing past her crotch, but she can feel more moisture spreading out. Something is between her legs–an acute bulk that rustles when she shifts her weight.

This time, she needs to look, but her attention is quickly taken up by distracting revelations.

Mostly, the hands pressed against her body. One hand with fingers laced through a strap over her chest, holding it tightly like a leash, one pressed into the front of her…

(I’m not wearing pants, and those aren’t panties, that’s a…)

“Diaper?” she says aloud, and the person attached to the hands laughs, a gentle teasing tone, her form still coming into focus.

“Good girl, you’re using your diaper, that’s correct,” she replies. “Just like you were told.” 

An audience watches her, paying particular attention to her diaper, to the way she reacts to her humiliations, but she’s blissfully unaware of their presence. For now, it’s just her and the strange woman. 

She pulls away, slack-jawed, eyes darting between her diaper and the woman standing in front of her. 

Editing Note: Mia gave me a description of Aya, I need to find it so I can put it here. 

“What–no, I didn’t–”

“Shh,” the woman says, a smirk spreading across her face. “If you want me to believe you don’t need your diapers, you’ll have to prove it. There’s a toilet just through that door–even though you couldn’t hold it completely, but if you can keep from making a big, stinky, mess in your diaper, I might let you come out and play with the big kids.” 

Ai doesn’t understand, but her mind is still coming into her body, still taking things in. The room looks…not clinical. A clinic would have a degree of comfort, it would be designed to help patients feel a little better about their situation. 

The room she’s in looks scientific, but only in a way that makes her feel like a specimen pressed into a glass slide. It’s hastily assembled, as though it were an afterthought, not worth giving any real focus. Why care about the set dressing? Her audience won’t remember what the room looks like; it’ll only remember the way she looks when she’s forced to fill her diaper. 

Before she can ask another question, before she can make her brain obey, the woman pushes a rubber ball between her teeth. She moves so swiftly and smoothly that by the time Ai recognizes the gag, it’s already locked into place. 

It doesn’t silence her, but it garbles her words into mere noise, so that when she tries to object, it comes out as, “Buhh-mughga!” 

The woman smiles again, warmly, like she’s watching a child present a crayon drawing and not facing a fully grown woman babbling into a gag. With straps around and above Ai’s head, she can’t spit it out, and her hands are trapped in the straightjacket, so she can’t reach up and pull it free. 

Ai’s senses finally come to be in her body fully, finally give her a full picture, and the result is claustrophobic. She jerks and twists, but her arms are held fast, with only a hint of wiggle room. 

“The suppositories won’t leave you much time,” the woman says. “If you want to use the potty, you’d best get started.” 

With her role in the performance done, the woman leaves–the audience doesn’t care about her any more, not unless she stays to taunt and belittle. That isn’t her role, it’s not why she’s here, so she won’t play that part. 

The room is empty, save for the two doors: one leading to the promised toilet, the other to the exit the woman had taken. With her gone, Ai is left alone.

Ai fights off the urge to keep struggling in the jacket. It wouldn’t get her anywhere; she needs to make progress. Taking deep breaths through her gag, she centers herself.

It’s difficult to walk around with her arms bound. She wobbles unsteadily, and the diaper makes the waddle more acute than it’d otherwise be. Reaching the bathroom door, she leans her back against the perpendicular wall for support. 

The bathroom door has a metal latch and a combination lock holding it shut. Next to the lock, a sticky note holds a simple message.

Combination is 1508 - A big girl should have no trouble opening it - Be sure to hurry. If you don’t make it to the potty, you’ve got another spanking in your future! - ❤️ Aya

Ai’s eyes widen and her brow furrows as she reads the note. 

It carries an implicit message. If she enters the combination, she can use the toilet, avoid…a spanking, and…

(She can’t be serious, can she?)

But, because she’s already in a straightjacket, already in a soggy diaper, she intuits another truth. 

(She’s serious.)

Ai makes up her mind. She needs to enter the combination. 

She takes a moment to inspect the combination lock. It has a spring-loaded cover over the combination, so that it’s difficult to reach. She tries pushing at the cover with her nose, but it won’t move, and the attempt forces her to squat awkwardly. She does half a chicken dance, her padded butt wobbling in the air as she tries to keep upright. Besides, even if she could get the cover to the side, there would be no way to turn the numbers without hands. Maybe her teeth, but they're gagged, and to remove the gag, well…

Ai needs her hands.

She steps back, breathing deeply, and feels a tentative, anxiety-inducing gurgle in her belly. The woman– 

(Aya. Her name is Aya.) 

Shaking her head, Ai tries to focus. She knows precious little, and can't afford to discard what few details she’s gleaned. 

Aya had mentioned suppositories. Ai doesn't know how long it will take the medicine to work, but judging by the early cramps, she can’t imagine it will be long. 

Shutting her eyes, Ai takes a few deep breaths. 

There aren’t any tools in the room she can use. Nothing sharp or hard or useful for leverage. It’s all up to her. 

She tries wriggling again, but this time, it’s not desperate flailing. There’s a little room for her arms to shimmy from side to side, and when she does, she can feel the back strap move. 

Squirming with new hope, Ai moves within the jacket. With the little amount of play she has, it seems like it should be possible to wriggle free, to–

“Mmmph!” She squeaks as she feels a sudden, intrusive buzz start up in the front of her sodden diaper. 

Bending over, she looks down and sees what she’d missed before. Attached by two straps on the straightjacket, held snugly in place over her diaper is a flat, plastic vibrator. Something had triggered it to start–her audience doesn’t want her to have too easy a time of it, and the distraction serves to entertain. 

Ai bites down on her gag and her cheeks flush. There’s only so much she can focus on at once. The claustrophobia, the restriction, and now the vibrator buzzing away, flooding her body with hormones and unwanted pleasure, it forces her down to the ground, sinking onto her butt.

(Deep breaths. Just persist, I can do this.)

The way the vibrator works, pulsing into a layer of sodden padding, just makes it worse: the pleasure is coming through her diaper, forcing her to acknowledge it, to think about the piss-soaked diaper in the context of intense, mind-numbing desire.

After a minute or so, the vibration stops, and the concern that it might kick back into high gear is just more motivation for Ai to keep trying. The gurgle in her belly–an insistent reminder of the suppositories doing their work–only pushes her further. 

(Think. The strap. It has play.) 

Sitting against the wall, she tries lifting her legs and moving her arms, shimmying side to side to get it out from beneath her, but there isn’t that much play. The strap holding her sleeves together won’t go past her waist. 

She tries the other way. Pushing against the wall for support, she stands, wobbles, and then pulls up. 

Bingo. It takes a lot of wriggling and effort, but the sleeves move over her head. 

Ai’s arms aren’t free, but they have mobility. The sleeves might still cover her hands, and the damned strap holds her arms together, bound so that she’s always making an O shape, but it’s progress; an enormous step in the right direction and a sign that she can succeed.

Before she can celebrate this victory, though…

Bzzz.

Her face flushes again, and she is once again distracted from escaping her situation. 

Ai can’t tell if the vibrator is turned higher, or if she’s become more susceptible to it by her first session of edging. Her Ego might shout and complain, but her Id’s reaction to the sensation is undeniable. The vibrator sends pulses through her sodden diaper and into her sex. Intense pleasure signals carry up her back and into her thoughts, killing her ability to focus on anything, even breathing, air escaping her mouth as little desperate moans.

(You’re better than how you feel.) 

She bites down on the gag until it hurts her jaw, forcing deep breaths through her nose.

(Don’t let this beat you.)

Another minute passes before the vibrator dies, and in its wake Ai needs a few moments to recover, panting into her gag. The pressure in her bowels is more intense than ever, but she’s still able to hold it. She still has time.

Getting back to her feet, Ai already notices an improvement. With her arms able to move freely, she can balance, all the wobbliness gone. She doesn’t need to use the wall for support any longer.

Waddling back to the padlock, she tries again, pressing the sleeves of the straightjacket into the combination cover. 

No dice. She can sort of get the cover to slide to the side, but when she does, there’s not enough play to get the small dial beneath to spin how she wants it.

Her attention returns to the jacket. 

She can open and close her hands beneath the heavy canvas. It doesn’t give her much control, but it gives just enough to grab things. Fumbling at her back, moving her arms together so she can reach as far as possible, she feels at the straps holding the jacket over her body.

Ai isn’t certain, but by wriggling and moving her back, she puts together a rough estimation of how it had been assembled. There are three buckled straps that comprise the linchpin of the vest. If she can get those loose, there’ll be enough play that she’d be able to get the crotch strap free. And, once that’s free, the jacket will just slide right off. 

Simple. Not easy, but simple. 

Ai refuses to contemplate the alternative to success: the pressure in her bowels releasing, and the subsequent threats that’d been made. She tells herself that the pressure she feels is just a ticking clock, and she lacks the time to think about why this self-delusion isn’t true.

Determined, she gets to work, pawing at her back. Going by sense of feel isn’t easy, especially when she has to work through layers of dense canvas, and her only way to manipulate things is to fumble through the jacket and try to squeeze whatever she can reach.

Grumbling into her gag, she works at it all the same, spinning in place to try and get a better angle like a dog chasing her own tail, until…

Cli-clack-clack-clack. 

The rattle of the metal buckle pulling free is pure relief, pure triumph. Just two to–

“MMpHH!” Her unbidden squeak seems deafening in the utterly silent room, legs buckling beneath her as she the vibrator kicks into high gear.

This time, Ai knows it’s turned up higher just from the pitch of the vibration, and she also can’t deny that her body is more susceptible than ever. The mixed sensation, frustration, and simple burning feelings that the buzzing brings up from deep inside Ai makes her forget herself, and she rides the pleasure with purpose. It isn’t just that there’s a vibrator pressed into her diaper, there’s something… more, but she can’t identify what. 

She wants it.

Just before she can ride into a reluctantly anticipated climax, the vibration stops. Ai cries out–no longer grateful to have the vibration end, but furious that she was denied her pleasure. She could have at least had a little bliss before returning to her task, but they–

She sits up sharply, the truth finally dawning. The timing is too perfect for the vibrator’s control to be automatic, on a timer, anything. An intelligent observer is turning it off and on at particular times. 

But… though she walks a circle of the room to look for one, she can’t see a camera, a viewport, or anywhere to hide and watch. The door doesn’t even have a gap beneath it or a keyhole to peer through. Her audience is watching another way, and she has no means to understand how. It can’t just be visual, either–they know precisely how Ai feels, they know her intimately, able to turn off the vibrator to deny her the climax that she’s been conditioned to want. 

Ai tries not to think about what else they could condition her to want. For now, she just wants three things–the toilet behind the door, the climax she’d been denied, and an explanation for her circumstances. 

She can’t have the third and isn’t in control of the second, so she forces herself to focus on the first. Accepting that she’ll have to deal with a malicious audience, Ai turns her attention to the second buckle. It’s harder in some ways, having to reach further down her back, but with the first buckle free she has a lot more range of motion. With only a minute of squirming, it comes free, and this time, knowing she’s got watchers, she braces herself.

It comes, right on queue, and she leans back against the wall, biting down on the gag and riding it out. She doesn’t hide that she’s enjoying it, and she admits to herself that the soggy diaper carrying the vibration into her might actually make things better.

This time, Ai speeds things along. One orgasm could clear the distraction from her mind, it could let her think more clearly, it could end the uncomfortable correlation that’s building in her unconscious between diapers and an almost incomparable sexual craving. She tries to indulge in the pleasure, to rush to the peak.

And again, it stops before she can climax. No pleasure to be had, just denial. 

(I was…just trying to get Aya to stop, because I knew she wouldn’t let me finish.)

Ai doesn’t believe herself. 

Only one buckle to go. 

She knows she’s going to make it. Her desperation is intense, but even if the vibrator sessions take minutes of her time away, she can last. It’s so close.

Ai just has to get the last buckle, which, now that she has a high range of motion with most of the jacket loose, isn’t difficult at all. 

Bracing herself, anticipating the vibrator’s surging power, she waits a couple seconds. She’s left disappointed when it refuses to activate. 

Frowning, she continues her escape. With all the other buckles free, she slides the straightjacket off her body. Though she feels a need to use the toilet, it’s not unstoppable. 

For reasons she can’t quite explain, she goes for the combination first, before stripping out of the diaper. 1508. 

(Is that 15-0-8? Or 1-50-8?... ‘1-5-08? Eh… oh, okay. There’s no ‘0’ on the combination, and no ‘08’. So it’s gotta be 1-50-8.)

Free fingers working deftly, she enters the combination. 

And, as triumph is within her grasp, she feels the vibrator pulse to life. 

The door swings open, but at that moment, her knees buckle. She falls to the ground, staring into the bathroom she’d unlocked, but she’s left stupefied by pleasure and cannot enter it. 

The vibrations are like nothing she’s ever felt before. Greater, more dominating than any sex in her memory, any pleasure she’s ever felt. The vibrator paralyzes her completely, rising in waves that give her just enough time to try and break free before it surges once more, throttling her mind, never quite reaching an intensity to let her climax, nor dropping enough to allow her escape. Her body craves the sensations, the feeling of a saturated diaper throbbing against her sex, and Ai cannot pretend that she only wants the edging to end faster. 

She can only sit on the ground, staring forward at the toilet only a few feet away, hopelessly frozen in agonizing bliss as the pressure in her builds, builds, builds, and with her thoughts and body so far from her own control, there’s no holding back. 

The edging may have lasted a minute, or ten, but it keeps her down until the suppositories do their work, and her diaper suddenly swells. The seat balloons out as a sudden warmth sludges into the padding. It’s faster than she expected, more intense: One moment, her diaper was only wet, but now it bulges and sags, muck packing in every corner available.

Even then, as the smell hits her and she knows she’s lost this game, she still wants it. 

(No…)

She still needs it. Her promised climax, the one bright spot of hope amidst the landscape of her shattered dignity. 

Biting down on the gag, moaning in wordless prayer to whatever cruel god controls her vibrator, Ai is given only disappointment. The vibrator dies, and she is left utterly defeated as the door behind her unlocks. 

Frustration pours over her. She’d lost. She’d lost, she’d humiliated herself for her audience’s pleasure, she’d bottomed out her diaper while only moments away from victory, she’d lost. And, even then, helpless to change the situation, the lingering desire still burns, craving the orgasm she’d earned. 

In the mental drop that follows, panting heavily and catching her breath, her thoughts clear slightly. A question in her thoughts that she hadn’t been able to consider, not until her thoughts were in her control again. 

(…the vibrator had been attached to the straightjacket, hadn’t it? So how–) 

The door behind her swings open. 

Aya steps in, making a show of sniffing the air, of ‘realizing’ that Ai has loaded her diaper like a helpless infant.

“That’s what I thought,” Aya declares. “Well then–I think it’s time for your spanking.” 

It’s exactly what her audience had wanted, and the fate Ai had fought desperately to avoid.

But then, her wants don’t matter. She exists to be observed, not to be happy, and right now, her observers see Aya pull her down, push her body so that her ruined diaper points into the air, and begin her assault.

Aya’s slaps are merciless and devastating, and Ai is at a loss for which contacts are the worst. 

The swats to her thighs sting like a swarm of bees; each leaving angry red marks on her tender, bare skin, and each eliciting a helpless, pained squeak into her gag. Pain builds with each impact, growing, multiplying on itself, burning overlaid on a deep ache, accented by acute spikes of acid pain. 

The blows to her diaper did little to hurt her body, but sent disquieting shockwaves through her soul. Though the pain is muffled by a layer of saturated, abused padding, the way that each spank presses the results of her accident into her reminds Ai that she failed and humiliated herself, and that she’d do it all again if it would get her ten seconds with the vibrator to reach the bliss she still craved. It makes her squirm in embarrassment and shame, worrying if she had always been this depraved, or if she’d just been broken that easily.

But, while pain and humiliation eat at her in their own ways, neither are the worst. What drives her insane are the occasional pauses, the rests where Aya retreats her hand and gently caresses the skin of Ai’s back and her delicate hair, soothing her, whispering sweet sounds without meaning, reassuring Ai in whispers that she’s doing so well to take her spanking like a good girl. Ai wants to scream. 

(How dare you try and comfort me when you’re the one inflicting the pain?)

But another thought plays in her mind. 

(If you’re not going to stop, can you hold me closer?) 

In the haze, the mindfuck soup that’s slowly blending her consciousness into putty, Ai starts to slip, but she refuses to lose herself. She catches onto a thread–the one facet of her identity that remains.

Her id slips away, disassociating from her quickly sublimating ego. She puts together her coherent thoughts, slim as they are, and chief among them is confusion.

(It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got. How did I get here?)

At first, she thinks about the room–how did she get put in the straightjacket? Or in this facility, for that matter? But then, a more specific form of the question presents itself.

(How did I get here? Over Aya’s lap?)

Ai remembers her defeat: Subdued by the vibrator, dropped to her knees, forced to pack her diaper full mere feet from the toilet. 

She remembers Aya coming in, taunting her, the subtle ways that the woman made Ai feel as small and helpless as possible.

Then…Ai was over Aya’s lap, and the spanking began, as though the world had shifted around them. Aya has a chair now.

(There definitely hadn’t been a chair in here before!)

The thoughts have no clear answer, and worrying over them, trying to parse the impossible situation, forces her mind back into her body. The full physical sensations assert themselves again: every smell, every feel, every ache.

Flailing, struggling, none of it seems to help. She’s going to be on Aya’s lap until the spanking is over, and there’s nothing she can do to resist that fate, but she no longer has the capacity to realize this. The mental break draws her deeper into her role: she fights, she kicks and yelps and whimpers, not because she thinks it will get her away, but because if she shows her defeat and wears her humiliation like armor, maybe Aya will give a little sympathy. 

Finally, the last few blows on her thighs rain down–hard enough that she cries out with more volume than ever–and it ends. The pain is over. All that’s left is a smug, taunting little bit of pressure; Aya rests her hand on the seat of Ai’s full diaper and presses down. It’s a degrading reminder that, for everything she’s been through, Ai still needed her pleasure. 

“Shh, shh,” Aya says, though Ai is perfectly quiet save for shallow breaths. “You took your spanking like a good girl–I think that deserves a reward.” 

(A reward?) 

Ai’s eyes snap open, heart suddenly pounding.

(Will…will she give me the wand?) 

Of course not. Even her gifts can only ever push her deeper into humiliation. Aya pulls Ai up, first seating the young woman on her lap, then turning her so that they face one another. Ai wriggles, but Aya’s firm grip pulls Ai down, so that her legs straddle one of Aya’s thighs. 

“You did good, just enjoy yourself,” Aya coos, and before Ai can even try to ask a question through her gag, the taller, stronger woman begins to bounce her knee up and down, a rhythmic motion against the ground. 

Each bounce raises Ai up just for a heartbeat, momentum carrying her into the air, and then down again to smash her weight into the mucky, full contents of her diaper. She’d packed it full–the suppository had left her unable to do anything else–and the heavy, squelching contents slosh against her skin with every landing, wafting the stink upward into a haze she can’t help but inhale. 

It’s as bad as the spanking–worse, because at least then the humiliation was broken up with pain. Now it’s one note playing over and over ad nauseam until Ai can’t think about anything except the state of her diaper, how she had failed, how she had been helpless from the start, how she never could have done anything except lose control, fall to her knees, and prove her infantile helplessness for all to see.

It had been inevitable, and now Aya makes sure that Ai knows it. 

But Aya isn’t all cruel. Once the lesson has sunk in, once Ai’s headspace is fully sunk into the seat of her diaper as firmly as her last accident, Ai realizes–this is the prize she wanted all along. She doesn’t need the vibrator, she just needs her diaper, and the slick ecstasy rhythm of Aya’s constant bouncing.

It doesn’t take her long. The bouncing lacks the white-hot power of the vibrator, the ability to all but rip an orgasm out of her body, but all of Ai’s intense edging has broken down her mind, left her horny and desperate in a way that only one pleasure could solve: the pleasure she gets from her diapers. She wants this–all of it.

Shuddering, Ai’s thoughts laser-focused on her helpless lack of control, relying on Aya’s firm arms to guide her as she bounces up and down. Each new rise and fall now rocks her with pleasure so intense it almost hurts, and only when she’s gasping and whimpering, thoughts numbed by ecstasy, do the bounces slow to a stop. She falls forward into Aya’s waiting arms, sweaty and delirious. 

“There’s my good girl,” Aya says, patting her back gently. “Now, let’s get you changed, okay? The experiment is over for the day.”

(The…huh?) 

Aya doesn’t explain further, and with her gag in, Ai can’t ask. She wants to, but her head is awash with a soup of endorphins and it’s difficult to convey any requests. ‘Take off my gag so I can speak immediately’ doesn’t occur to her. She’ll ask when she can, if she can, if Aya will allow it and if her audience doesn’t put a stop to anything so reasonable as ‘telling Ai what’s going on.’ 

Aya guides her to the floor, gently laying Ai on her back, so that her diaper is easily accessible. Reaching for the nearest tape, Aya pulls it free.

…

Ai blinks. She’s in the room–or, maybe a different room, it’s so bland that she can’t quite tell. Sharp emotional whiplash courses through her–all the hormones and post-coital bliss has vanished. She feels almost sick at the change, like instantly switching from drunk to sober, though there’s no expected headache or physical discomfort to accompany the stark mental shift.

Aya is gone.

Ai’s diaper is clean–no, that’s not right. Though it’s reasonably dry, and there’s no longer a heavy load weighing down the seat, she can feel a trickle of dampness dribbling into the crotch. She’s mostly clean, but a little wet. 

Otherwise, she’s naked. A gag is locked in her mouth again–nobody wants to hear what she has to say–but her hands are free.

More importantly, her mind is free as well. Something seems to have cleared it–the soup of endorphins that had rendered her thoughts into pulp has lifted. She remembers everything clearly, but with the distance of the morning after, the feeling of a cold dawn light that showed how far she’d fallen just moments before. 

In the corner, she sees a steel cage, like a kennel that might hold a large dog, but sturdier. Against the far wall is a TV, an old tube style that probably weighs a billion pounds and has its own built-in VHS player. 

The doors are where Ai remembers, but the handles have been replaced. Instead of padlocks or tumblers, they have pin pad locks. A new puzzle. A clock on the wall counts down–it shows five hours and fifty nine minutes, with the seconds slipping lower and lower. Thirty three. Thirty two. 

Finally, Ai turns to see a stack of worksheets on the floor, with crayons in a cardboard box next to them. 

She has a good sense of what she’s supposed to do, but she isn’t interested in playing. She knows that playing will lead to more demolition of her mind, more brainfuck pain and pleasure that will leave her identity in further fragments. 

Reaching down, she rips off the diaper.

…

Ai blinks and looks around. 

She is in the same room, but she’s standing somewhere else. Her brow furrows. Did she…teleport? Did the room move around her? 

Or did she lose time? 

The clock shows that only a minute has passed–Five fifty eight and some seconds, not five fifty nine.

Looking down, she notes the constant–she’s got her diaper on again, still just ever so slightly damp, though the tapes are different–placed a bit higher, pulled a bit more snug. 

She wants to say, ‘Screw this’, but the gag stops her, so she just thinks it as intensely as she can and rips the garment free.

…

Ai blinks, steps back, and stomps her foot. She’s moved again, a few steps over. Pressing both her hands into her face, she groans, muffling her exasperation. Only thirty seconds have gone by. 

Her diaper… 

(Fuck this, I’m not wearing a fucking diaper.)

She rips it free. 

…

Ai-

“AAGGGGHHHH!” She screams, frustration coming through without any need for defined words. 

Her diaper is still in place–though, looking closely, she sees that duct tape has been added, reinforcing the straining sticky tapes that’d lost their bite after being undone several times. It’s slightly cool, almost clammy, as though it’d been exposed to air for a while. Five full minutes had passed–apparently, some time had been needed to retrieve the tape. 

Petulantly, Ai refuses to play the game. Knowing what will happen, she rips the tape free and yanks at the diaper beneath.

…

Ai yelps as she comes to her senses. 

Things have changed.

Her diaper is back–of course–but if it’s held in place with tape, she can’t see, because it’s beneath a ruffled pink onesie that zips up behind her back. Her hands are no longer the tool they’d been before, either–canvas mittens are pulled over them, so while she can bat things around and probably pick objects up in awkward fists, she couldn’t squeeze a zipper or get her fingers under her diaper’s tapes. 

More acute, more distressing, she feels a solid weight in her bottom–cold, solid metal from a particularly heavy butt plug. 

Twenty minutes have passed, and the countdown continues. Five hours thirty-four minutes, something-something seconds, she doesn’t care about the precise count. 

Though there’s nothing written in the room, no notes left for her, she gets the message. If she continues to throw a tantrum and refuses to play the game presented to her, it will only get worse. Right now, she has to deal with a distracting, intrusive plug and no more hands. If she disobeys again, she might find herself back in the straightjacket, or some other torture. Who knows what other obscenities her audience would want done to her?

So, though she wants to continue to abstain from her captor’s game, she crouches in front of the TV.

Looking at the black glass, at her reflection, she––

Note: Ai does not lose time here, and fully perceives things for a moment. What she sees, however, is withheld from her audience.

–”What the fuck?” she yelps, stumbling back, landing on her butt–pushing the plug into her, reminding her of its constant presence. 

She’s shaken, but she has to keep pressing on. Crawling forward, she presses the power button on the TV, then rewinds the VHS player to the start. The nostalgic whir of reversing tape calms her down a bit, and by the time it resets, her heart has stopped pounding.

When it plays, her pulse skyrockets again. 

A woman with vaguely Southeast Asian features stares into the camera, wavy dark hair rippling over her shoulders and a confident smirk plastered on her lips, her eyes seeming to follow Ai. 

Ai recognizes the face, but doesn’t understand how she’s seeing it here. 

“In case you’re too little to properly understand the rules,” the woman says, “I’ve decided to give you this little explainer. If you can complete the worksheets, each one will give you a letter–you do know your letters, don’t you, sweetie?” 

The woman paused for a moment, to let her leering condescension hit with full impact. Ai just watches wide-eyed, confusion and fear clouding her thoughts. 

“Well–if you get all the letters, it’ll tell you the combination to the door. Get the door open before your time is up, and you can have a grown up dinner, a diaper change, and you can sleep in a grown up bed tonight. But, if you don’t, you’ll be fed through a bottle and you’ll be sleeping in the kennel behind you. And since I expect the special medicine in the bottle will make your tummy very upset, you’ll be wishing for a diaper change all night, but you won’t get one. You’ll be trapped.” 

Sneering, the woman on the video reaches forward towards something, and then the video ends. 

Ai just looks at the black screen for a moment, at her reflection, until the black void of video turns to a blue ‘no signal’ screen. 

She looks at the worksheets for a moment, but her gaze can’t focus, and she starts to panic. It doesn’t make sense. She saw a detail she wasn’t supposed to see, and the discontinuity has broken her ability to play along. 

Ai stands, and though her hands are bound by mitts and her onesie keeps her diaper in place, it’s not enough. She can still refuse to play–getting her hands under the hem of the onesie, she yanks at it, tearing the fabric free. Maybe next time they’ll seal her in kevlar or tie her hands behind her back, she doesn’t care, she exposes her diaper–it’s a new diaper, apparently, there’s no tape and the patterns are different–and rips it away. 

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter Two

“Sorry, sorry–” 

Ai had grown used to moving around the room, but sudden disorientation still hits her this time–she’s not in the room anymore. She’s somewhere else entirely, and she has no time to appear disoriented. It’s pure luck that her endorphins didn’t carry over from the last moment she could remember, or her panicked state would have triggered an anxiety attack almost immediately. 

Aya is in front of her, moving forward with urgency, reaching out with a couple napkins wadded in her hand. Quickly, Ai shakes her head, scooting back. “Erm–” 

She tries to take in everything all at once. They’re in a break room, the kind that’s common across pretty much the whole world: there’s a fridge, a sink, a microwave. A few other people are eating lunch, workers in lab coats that she doesn’t recognize and doesn’t care to meet, because Aya has all her attention. 

Ai can remember Aya holding her down, pinning her in place, bringing down powerful blows on Ai’s thighs and diapered bottom. Then, she’d seemed so powerful, so immovable, but now she looks almost…subservient. The woman’s face is so full of urgent concern and a need to help that Ai’s initial impulse, to panic, quickly consumes itself. She is confused, but not afraid. 

It might be another trap, but if it is, Ai doesn’t understand it, and she doesn’t let herself work up any anxiety over nothing. 

Her lap is hot and wet, but that, too, is different from how she remembers. She’s not wearing a diaper, and the warmth has spread past her crotch, down her legs. It’s too warm, almost scalding. Looking down, she sees soup, bits of processed chicken and rubbery noodles spilled all over her lap, her pants soaked with hot broth all the way through and into her panties. 

The heat is enough to make her wince, but she ignores the pain and shakes her head, taking the napkins from Aya. “Eh–thank you.” 

“Sorry, just–” Aya starts, looking away. “Clumsy. And I feel bad.” 

“Why?” Ai asks. (Because you spanked me?) 

“Because–look, I know I was just playing a role, but it felt mean. And then…finding out it got shuttered the next day, how am I supposed to take it, except to think it’s my fault?” 

Ai doesn’t have time to think of a clever response, not as new information pounds into her brain, insisting she try and keep track of it all. The best she can manage is a noncommittal shrug. 

Aya looks away, exhaling through her nose, and she doesn’t look back for several seconds. “I’ll stop apologizing, just…sorry. No, sorry, I…this whole situation has me feeling so...I don’t know. She still looks like you the whole time, y’know? But I’m not supposed to treat you like you, and…it’s just a weird headspace to occupy.”

Trying to keep her act going a little longer, Ai avoids a response, but it’s clear Aya wants to hear…something. Reassurance, maybe. Ai has an inkling of what’s going on, but she lacks certainty, and the wrong word could be disastrous.

“If I may…” Ai starts, speaking slowly to buy time to think. Ultimately, she goes with her gut: If her hunch about the situation has any merit to it, she shouldn’t be kind. “It’s not my job to make you feel better. If your performance were a problem, I’d have said so, but you can work out your feelings in your own time. I need to go clean myself off.” 

Getting to her feet, she whirls, half to stride out of the break room, half to hide the uncertainty that’s painted onto her face. The move is vindicated a moment later, when Aya calls after her, “Hold on–Bala, wait.” 

Ai keeps walking, because now, the uncertainty has been promoted to panic. 

She doesn’t know the name, but she knows that it’s not her. 

Taking deep breaths, Ai walks out into the hallway, looking both ways. It’s painfully generic, as though whoever made this space never intended it to be seen, except by people who wouldn’t be impressed or even care about the surroundings. Without any indication of where she might need to go, she picks a direction at random, trying to look confident as she strolls down the hall.

She knows a few things, by Sherlock-esque deduction. 

She knows that whenever she’s found herself in this…place, she’s been in a diaper, but more importantly, it’s always been a wet diaper. She can remember the sensation of just having wet herself, but not of being dry. Apparently, the rules that governed her counted any undergarments, not just diapers, and it didn’t care whether she’d soaked her panties with piss or chicken broth–wet was wet.

She’d escaped from the curated experiences that had been made for her by sheer luck, but she won’t have much opportunity to use that freedom. The soup is drying quickly, already cool on her thighs, but she’s got a more urgent fear than that. 

Lab technicians–

(Researchers? Scientists?)

People in lab coats pass her in either direction, all giving nods of deference. She seems to be in charge, or at least in a position of authority. Too many people are paying attention to her, and Ai scrambles to think of a way to extend her brief bout of freedom. 

She needs to deal with the stain on her pants first, and ensure her mind will stay intact once the soup dries. Ai somehow doubts that she could excuse it if she pissed herself for all to see, so she needs protection, a way to be wet without being obvious. So, looking out for the nearest restroom with a dress-wearing stick figure on the door, she ducks inside. 

For once, she has a stroke of luck. Wherever she is, they don’t care for decor, but they care for hygiene. A dispenser on the wall holds pads and tampons, and she takes one of the former out before detouring to the nearest stall.

Moving past the mirror, she makes a point not to look at it. She doesn’t want to deal with that yet.

In the stall, she slips down her soup-covered pants, but takes care to keep her wet panties in place. If she screws this up, she won’t get another try. Fingers shaking, she removes the pad from its packaging and fumbles it into her panties, adding enough absorbent material that–she hoped–it would count. 

Now she just has to wet herself. Sitting on the toilet, it’s harder than she expects–she’d already been in a wet diaper, she’d even pooped in one, but convincing her body that she really, truly needs to wet her panties is another matter. 

She gets another stroke of luck. Someone comes in to wash their hands, and the sound of flowing water is enough to trick her brain into action. She floods the pad, and as it swells with pee, the excess trickling down into the toilet, she sighs in relief. 

Waiting until the dripping is done, until she’s sure nothing will leak into the pants, she gets up and flushes. There’s no putting it off now, she has to confront the truth. 

Ai steps out of the stall and faces her reflection. 

She isn’t wearing her own face, the face she knows. She’s not her.

Ai stares at the face–the face she’d seen in the TV twice. First in the video, she’d seen the probably-Indian woman with the black hair stare at her with malice and condescension. Then, when the video had ended, she’d seen the same face stare back in her reflection, full of confusion and horror. 

She is her own tormenter, and staring into the bathroom mirror, she can’t escape that truth.

It’s just what she saw before, when she looked at the TV screen, the image that’d driven her into a panic. She is not Ai. Her features are southeast asian, she has flowing black hair, and from her point of view, she’d seen the face curl up in a smug smile on a VHS tape not ten minutes prior. 

Ai isn’t here, not really.

Bala stands in the bathroom, gazing at her own reflection, with Ai’s mind temporarily holding the steering wheel. She is, somehow, inside Bala, borrowing her body, living in it like a parasite. Only…parasites don’t get plucked from their own lives and forced into a host. She is something else. 

(A passenger.)

That feels better, except passengers still chose to come on a voyage.

(A prisoner.)

Better.

She inspects herself more thoroughly. Her clothes are pared down and professional, with a slightly scientific angle. She isn’t wearing scrubs exactly, but the style seems scrubs-adjacent. If she worked in STEM, Ai might know what to call it, but she has to go with her loose, half-accurate descriptions for now. 

No nametag, but she doesn’t need that. She knows whose face she wears. More interesting is the elastic, retractable lanyard on her waist, attached to a magnetic keycard.

She has no way of telling which doors it can open, but surely it will open something. 

With a pee-soaked pad keeping her mind in place, she wipes her pants off to get rid of soup crud, washes her hands, and steels herself. If she gives herself away, she will probably wake up back in some room, some new chamber, being tortured for an unseen audience’s pleasure.

Ai refuses to go back to that, not if she can help it. She needs information–she needs to know what’s going on, and how she can escape it. She has an idea for how to get that information, too, but it will require her to embody the woman who taunted her on the TV; a woman who seemed to be embody spite and cruelty, wanting nothing more than to torture Ai for reasons impossible to fathom.

Ai can do that. After all her torture, she’s got some malice built up that she needs to vent. 

Stepping out into the hall, she spins on the first person she sees, some researcher or worker or it doesn’t matter. “You,” she snaps, pointing at them.

They freeze, and whether it’s her posture or tone or purely from Bala’s reputation, Ai gets the ‘deer-in-headlights’ look she wanted. “Yes, ma’am!” they reply quickly, almost dropping the clipboard they’re holding. 

“Give me a status update,” she says, staying as vague as possible. “I know there’s a lot up in the air right now–I need to know the most up-to-date information.”

Their eyebrows raise, fear driving their response. “I–I don’t know that, ma’am. I’m just getting off lunch, and–”

“And, what?” She demands. “You think I want to hear excuses?” 

“No, but–” 

“But, but, but,” Ai interrupts. “If you can’t be prepared and ready to give an effective answer, I’m not going to wait on your timetable, no sir. Since you can’t answer my question right now, we will go to my office and you’ll stay there until you find out.” Bala’s office has to have the details she needs, Ai just needs access–and this poor figure in front of her can give her that access.

Their eyes widen even further, the fear of being fired–or possibly worse. Ai doesn’t know how they treat bad employees here. They might put insubordinate workers through the same torture Ai had experienced, for all she knew.

Nodding quickly, the employee stammers, “I–yes ma’am!” 

Ai waits a moment longer, raising one eyebrow and channeling impatience. “Well? After you.” 

The worker squeaks and turns without another word, and their effort to scamper forward and get this awkward situation over with pushes them to lead without question. Ai follows, hiding her satisfaction, as she gets directed straight to Bala’s office. 

The decor is as sparse as she’d come to expect, but it’s well stocked. A computer is on her desk–an iMac, the kind where the screen is about the size of a beach ball because it has all the computer parts built into it, and a phone sits next to it with all sorts of extra buttons for intercom and Ai-doesn’t-really-know. There’s even a rolodex–Bala is an organized administrator, it seems. 

“I…” the lab assistant stammers. 

Gesturing to the computer, Ai snaps, “Get to work. Use my phone, hell, drink my coffee while you’re at it, since I’m apparently waiting on you. Trust me: Waste enough of my time, and this will get personal.”

She doesn’t have to say another word. The terrified figure gets onto her computer, logs in with an admin password, and quickly pulls up status reports from a lengthy chain of emails.

“Okay–okay,” they say, their breathing coming fast. “I–Ma’am, I’m sorry.”

“I won’t shoot the messenger,” she says, moving in to look.

“The project’s been fully canned, they’re pulling funding and looking into other things,” they explain. “After your Alter Identity saw her reflection and had that panic attack, management decided that this wouldn’t be an effective route to regression after all. They already had doubts after seeing that the regression reverted between sessions, which–I mean–I’m sorry–they decided that it was taking the subject’s mental state in the wrong direction. Please don’t be mad at me. They–it’s just one failed experiment, you’ve still got authorization to pursue your other plans once this AI is erased. 

Ai tries not to sound too eager, too excited. “What happens to her after that?” 

“Oh.” They pause, uncertain. “I…that’s more your department, you’re the one who built it, but…doesn’t the AI kind of just stop?” 

Frowning, Ai makes a gesture with her hand for them to continue. “Stop?”

“Well, she’s a constructed identity. She doesn’t really exist. Once you undo the conditioning, so that she can’t manifest, I kinda just assumed that the AI would…‘die’ isn’t the right word, but you get my meaning. Why are you asking me this?”

“I meant, ‘What happens to the research we’ve conducted on her’,” Ai lies, screaming within her thoughts. “But, never mind. You’ve done what I asked. Get back to work and we won’t have to talk about this again.”

“Yes ma’am,” they say, looking almost like they’re going to salute before simply getting up out of Bala’s office chair and hurrying out of the office.

Ai stands there, stunned. 

If she gets caught, she won’t have to worry about being being tortured or humiliated. That would be bad, but being sent through humiliations, having her ass beaten bloody, being edged and tormented in diapers, it still seemed preferable to her new crisis. 

At least, if she was being forced to fill diapers and solve impossible puzzles, she’d get to exist. 

Facing the weight of this realization, Ai allows herself a brief moment to slip into a dissociative meltdown. There just doesn’t seem to be another reasonable course of action.

She only exists in wet underwear, and if she cleans herself, if she takes off the piss-soaked pad in her panties, she’ll cease to exist forever. Nothing she can think of softens that blow–she’ll be caught, or she’ll have to change eventually, and when that happens, she will just be…

Gone.

For a moment, she sees herself there, just standing in the office, paralyzed by inaction. In the context of her circumstances, knowing how small and weak she is against the prospect of nonexistence, what else can she do?

But the disassociation makes things worse. Seeing herself, thinking of herself as nothing but a body, it only reminds her that this isn’t even her body. Even the simple numbing remedy that comes from an out-of-body experience is denied to her, because she has no body to be out of, just a temporary residence. 

So, though she wants to break down and sob, there’s simply no opportunity. She bottles up her fear, her anxiety, her existential dread, and pushes it down into herself. Maybe, maybe, there’s a solution buried in Bala’s computer. 

Without any other plan, she sits down at the keyboard and begins pouring through the files.

Bala is, to her relief, a meticulous woman, with all her files carefully labeled. Less helpfully, the projects all seem to have code names. 

She reads all the folders twice, trying to find the one relating to herself. Star Gazers. Cookie Clicker. Quiet Time. Coral Island. V's Guest. Jacqueline Hyde. Hello Nurse. There’s a few others, too, more blatant than the rest. Zoo. Language. Vulcan. 

On the second pass, Ai finally gets it. 

‘Jacqueline Hyde.’ 

Jekyll and Hyde. 

Dual identities. 

“Right,” she whispers. “Duh. So much for a secret name.” 

Clicking on it, she starts to read. It doesn’t take long before she’s drowning in jargon, technical terms and descriptions of machinery she cannot understand. 

She’s not helpless, though. Ai is no scientist, but she’s not clueless. When she comes across a series of recordings, video logs labeled with dates and particular keywords, she feels a surge of hope.

She clicks on the first one, and flinches involuntarily when she sees her borrowed face appear on the screen in compressed, low-quality video. 

The woman on screen, Bala, lacks the condescension she wore the last time Ai saw her. She’s standing tall, professional, a bit cold. 

“I’m recording this for posterity. Since I imagine anyone watching this won’t be interested or able to understand the technical elements, I’ll keep this simple. If you want to understand how the machine works, check the documentation.” Bala smiles, but Ai notices a touch of bitterness behind the expression. “As if they’re anything but babble. Glass tubes and sprockets and nonsense–the why doesn’t matter, it could have been magic or alchemy or nanotech. Aya makes it work. The important thing is the research, not the methods.” 

Backing up, she reveals a projection screen behind her and raises a clicker, though the slide she pulls up is so compressed by the video display as to be almost illegible. All Ai can make out is a vaguely human shape and skin-tone colors. 

“How can you tell which elements of regression therapy are most effective, and which are wasted time? If you’re successful, you can’t, because the only person who can tell you what worked on them is now incapable of expressing that information in any scientifically useful way.” Raising both hands to frame her face, she says in a mock tone, “‘Yes, and how did you respond to the spanking?’ ‘Goo gah guhh goo’. It’s not exactly rigorous.”

Clicking the slide forward, a machine of some kind–steel and wires–pops up on the display. “That’s where the Versable comes in. I’ve had Aya create a universe in which we have access to the infinite span of worlds, and where we can tap into minds from alternate universes–those parallel to our own. We make copies of their minds. We could bring along their bodies, but that wouldn’t help–we may as well clone Ai, if we did that. To ensure we’re working with a clean slate, we strip the context of the identity, so that they have a form of amnesia–they’ll remember who they are, but not any specific events. We get the personality, but not the person, copied into a compliant host. We’re calling them ‘Artificial Identities’, and I so wish that there was someone in this universe who would get the joke.” 

Waving a hand, she moves things along. “With the right triggers implanted in the transverse personality requisition, we can make the identity come out in response to stimuli, and revert when that stimuli is gone. The host mind remembers everything, and can record the experiences after the fact. Now, all we have to do is find a compatible mind, bring it over, and see how it responds when we administer our regression experiments. So that’s the plan–find a compatible mind, bring it, break it.” 

A smile creeps over her face, spreading like a virus, and she adds quietly, “And I know exactly what mind we’ll be breaking.” 

The video comes to an end, and Ai sees Bala’s face reflected in the black screen for a moment before the video player minimizes and an image of a green field replaces it. 

Swallowing, she scrolls forward, skipping videos, looking for useful keywords. ‘Attempted implantation - 1’ through ‘Attempted implantation - 7’ are all skipped. After all the attempts, however, she finds what she’s looking for.

‘Successful implantation of Artificial Identity - 1.’ 

Holding her breath, Ai pulls it up. 

Bala is standing by a machine, the one from the slide in the previous video, though the new video shows it in crisper detail now that it’s not a photo on a projector being captured by yet another camera. It looks rather like an MRI, and Bala is operating one set of controls, naked save for a diaper. 

Pulling a lever on the opposite set of controls, Aya starts the machine, and after Bala enters a few instructions, she gets onto the mat and it slides her in. The device spins. Light flashes out, so brilliant it overwhelms the camera for a moment, and when the picture returns, Bala sits upright.

“Did it work?” Aya asks. “Did I–did I do it right?” 

Bala shrugs. “Only one way to find out.” 

Closing her eyes, she focuses for a moment, and though the camera is too grainy to show much, a slight pixelation of compressed yellow stains her diaper. 

A moment later, she bolts upright, eyes wide. “What–where the hell am I?” 

“Take a breath,” Aya says, holding out a hand. “You’re in a medical facility. Do you remember how you got here?” 

Bala thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. “No.”

“Do you remember your name?” 

That takes a little effort. “Mary. Mary Bambine, but…I don’t remember anyone ever calling me that. What happened?”

In front of the computer, watching the video, Ai frowns. This wasn’t her. It isn’t her. They brought over two people?

“The amnesia will wear off in a little while,” Aya lies. “Can you tell me what year it is?” 

Again, Mary focuses. “I feel like…it’s got to be…I don’t know. I don’t know. Where am I?” 

“Just take a breath,” Aya assures her, moving closer. “I just need to adjust something, okay?” 

She watches Mary, who watches her in turn, cautious but not resisting. Reaching forward, Aya suddenly grabs and jerks on the front of the diaper, ripping it free. 

Bala sits upright and takes a breath, smiling, satisfied. “It worked. It worked. Make a note of that mind–we’ll clear this one, then copy it in fresh so that she doesn’t remember waking up in the machine. I was right–we just needed your special touch. You operate the machine better than anyone.” 

Ai closes the video, her breath coming in quick bursts. The next video is labeled as the same day, then ‘2 - Failure’. 

Bala sits in front of her desk, nursing a mug. She looks tired, even through pixelation. 

“Status report,” she says, speaking slowly. “I thought, once we got the copies working, it would be smooth sailing, but… We aren’t copying minds. We’re taking them. I think we have a way to put them back safely, but I don’t know what the consequences of that would be. If the subject retains memories of being tested, we could corrupt the whole multiverse.” 

She sips from the mug and inhales sharply, like the drink is bracing her willpower. “We brought ‘Mary’ over. She wasn’t my first pick, but I need methods that work on more than one girl–I had planned to start light and only focus on my main goals once the methods were perfected. From everything we could determine, this ‘Mary’ was a perfect subject for regression testing, for experimentation with diapers–her mind matched what we were looking for, almost to a T, but after the first pull, we didn’t put her back. We deleted her. And when we went to make another copy…” 

Frowning, she shakes her head. “I’m making this video for the logs, but we’re not reporting this, it’ll only be in my personal file. They can find out once we have our data. It’s too important to give up. I’m not giving this up, but…I know there’s an infinite amount of people out there, and an infinite number of minds to borrow, but I don’t want to hurt people to accomplish my goals.”

Pursing her lips, she still seems bitter and sad as she adds, “Well…most people. If I have to pick one person to destroy, over and over, it may as well be her.”  

Ai’s fingers are numb as she looks at the final video.

‘Successful implantation of Artificial Identity - Two.’

She barely breathes as the video plays, as Bala enters a code, lies down, and goes into the machine. She and Aya are wordless as a new identity is copied, and when Bala comes out, they don’t immediately tape her into a diaper.

“We got her,” Bala says, breathing quickly. She seems excited, like a child at the peak of a rollercoaster, waiting for the drop and the gut-twisting, thrilling weightlessness to follow. Fear and anticipation in tandem. “Fetch the straightjacket–I want to get to work right away. I want to learn how to break this mind within the week.” 

“That’s ambitious,” Aya cautions, though she’s already obeying, leaving the room. “Do you want to start slow?”

“I want her thoughts gone,” Bala replies harshly. “I want her head empty. I want to feel her thoughts slip and slip until they’re goo, until she’s a drooling mess and she can’t fuck things up ag–” 

Jaw setting, she catches herself, aware of Aya’s uncertain stare. 

“We aren’t going to take things slow,” Bala finishes. “We’re going to move fast and break things.” 

They exit the frame, and the clip continues for thirty more seconds on an empty room before the video player closes out of itself. 

There are no videos more recent than that. Checking the timestamp against the computer’s calendar, Ai sees it’s about a week old. 

They brought her over, with plans to destroy her and discard the remains, but…there’s a way back. She just needs help to do it. 

It takes flipping through Bala’s rolodex to find the right phone number. It takes another moment of uncertainty, fingers hovering over the phone, before she works up the courage to call Aya. 

Ai’s too timid for a full phone call, she only manages one sentence. “Come to my office immediately.” She slams the phone down before Aya can reply, hoping that her fear will be read instead as confidence. 

Aya is prompt–a good sign. She’s either obedient or afraid. Entering Ai’s office, Aya closes the door behind her. “What do you need, ma’am?” 

“You heard the project is being shut down, I presume?” Ai asks. “All our work is being tossed down the drain.” 

Glancing to the side, Aya nods. “I–of course I heard.”

“Do you know why Ai is scheduled to be destroyed instead of sent home?” she asks.

“No,” Aya says quickly. Speaking louder, speaking more slowly, she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Ai frowns. “We can send the minds back, but–” 

“Bala!” Aya blurts, looking over her shoulder quickly. The door’s closed, but she’s still alarmed, as though they might be overheard. “You–you can’t say that. You’re the one who told me to keep that element a secret.”   

Blinking, Ai tries to maintain composure. “Of course I am, but it’s just us here. There’s nobody listening.” 

But there are other people listening, or at least following along. Ai still has her audience, paying attention to every word she says.

Striding to the desk to sit across from Ai, Aya leans forward, speaking in hushed tones. “You ordered me to keep it a secret–to make sure nobody finds out we’re pulling real minds, not making copies. If the higher ups found out, it would…”

She can’t finish the sentence. If she could speak the truth, she would have said, ‘It would make things too real, it would change the balance and spoil the mood. You can’t enjoy the scene and fear for her life at the same time.’ 

“My point is,” Ai says. “To hell with the risk. If our research is being canned, we need to get Ai home, immediately. At least we can mitigate the harm, even if we won’t be able to get the results we want.”

Sitting up straight, Aya nods, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Yes, ma’am.”

If only this were the end of the story, it might get a happy ending. 

Alas, there’s still a full chapter yet to come.

[PeculiarChangeling]

Chapter Three

Note: I’m gonna need major help on this one from Sophie, for obvious reasons.

Ai tries to seem like she isn’t so much following Aya as she is simply walking behind her. She can’t give herself away now, not when she’s so close to escape. Her heart pounds in her chest so hard she’s worried everyone will know, but if anyone else can hear her blood rushing through her ears, they don’t react. 

(Just get sent home. Put this all behind you. Maybe I won’t even remember, it’ll just be like a nightmare, when you don’t even remember the details, and I’ll be free.) 

They get into an elevator, and Aya waits. After a moment of perplexed silence, she gestures to the badge scanner.

“Eh–Bala,” she says, looking between Bala and the buttons, “I don’t have authorization to get down there, it has to be your badge.”

“Right,” Ai replied, nodding and reaching out to swipe her badge. “Of course, I apologize. I’m just lost in thought.” 

Aya frowns a little deeper. “You’ve had a day, haven’t you?” 

Ai returns the gesture, slightly perturbed confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You suddenly care about Ai, and now you’re apologizing. You’re not normally this sentimental.” 

Shrugging, Ai says, “Just thinking about why we’re doing this.” 

The elevator doors open, right into the deep, buried lab. Ai steps in, looking around–the walls in front are painted white, but the ones behind her, the ones she hadn’t seen in the security video, are bare drywall. They weren’t meant to be seen. 

“Get it set up,” she says. “Be fast.” 

“Alright,” Aya says, gesturing to the side, to a thin door. “Go ahead and get changed.” 

Ai frowns. “Changed?” 

Aya blinks a couple times, baffled. “We’re not sending you to another mind, are we? Ai has to be in the driver’s seat if we want her to go back.” 

“I misunderstood,” Ai says, before correcting herself, projecting more Bala-like condescension “Be more specific next time. I’ll be quick.” 

Entering the small room, she takes stock of the supplies–it’s got diapers and a changing table. It’s made for this purpose, after all. 

Of course, Ai has to be careful–she can’t take off her pee-soaked panties. She shucks out of her pants and lays down, but leaves her wet panties on, feeling ridiculous as she unfolds a diaper from the stack. Unfolding it, she feels ridiculous, but there’s no escaping what she has to do.

Lifting her damp panties off the table, she slides the diaper beneath her hips, adjusting it a little to get it straight. She’s uncertain why she knows how to do this, or what experience in her previous life had taught her to self-change her diapers, but she can’t question that right now. Folding the diaper between her thighs, she pulls it snugly over her wet panties, squishing the sodden pad against her crotch as she presses the sticky tapes down.

She almost puts the pants back on, but what would be the point? The diaper needs to be on display. 

“Ready?” She asks Aya as she steps back in.

Aya nods, gesturing to the far controls. “Just needs your authorization and the dimensional code.”

(My–fuck.) 

Ai hadn’t even considered that she’d need to do the work here, that she’d have to help with the set up. Walking to the display, she hesitates. A menu flashes at her, asking for dimensional coordinates. It wants four digits–if she guesses at random, she won’t have a prayer of getting it right. 

Frozen, staring, Ai tries to think back to Bala’s meticulous notes. Had she written the code down anywhere? Would Ai’s memory be reliable even if she had?

She knows then she can’t get home, but she has to try.

(Hell, anywhere has to be better than here. Even if my mind gets scattered to a new dimension, at least it’ll be free of this place.)

Holding her breath, picking numbers at random, she enters a code, choosing an arbitrary number, a throwaway pick that has no meaning to her. 

1508. 

“Should we restrain you?” Aya asks, as Ai lies down on the mat, ready to slide into the machine, ready to go…somewhere.  

“Just tell Ai that she’s going home,” Ai replies, heart pounding, fingers shaking with anxiety. “I know how she thinks. She’ll obey.” 

Aya nods. “Okay.” 

She’s waiting on Ai, waiting for “Bala” to wet herself. Ai closes her eyes, concentrates–she doesn’t need to pee, she already went just half an hour ago, but Aya doesn’t know that. 

(If it’s just a trickle, it won’t even be visible, right?)

After a moment, she gasps and her eyes shoot open. It’s her best act, a performance to make it seem like she just arrived. Looking around, she blurts, “Where am I?” 

Aya smiles warmly. “Just lie down, Ai. You’re going home.” 

Ai doesn’t want to be too obvious. She pretends to think for a moment, to calm down, though she’s anything but calm. Hoping it won’t give her away, she watches Ai, searching for a spark of recognition as she places the part. “Oh–okay. Okay, I’m going home. That’s good.” 

Aya watches her back, and the two of them share a long searching look. Ai’s heart tightens in her chest, but Aya doesn’t make any accusations. Reaching out, she pats Ai on the shoulder. 

“Just lie down, and this will all be over soon.”

Ai lies down. 

Aya pulls the lever.

Ai slides into the machine, and white light flash in her eyes. 

…

Ai didn’t know where she was, but at least she could remember. The machine, the jump, her promise to herself that anywhere would be better than nowhere, it all stuck with her. 

Turning, she took in her surroundings. She was in the middle of a living room, with a couch and a television.  Behind her, there was a kitchen with a kitchen island.  Everything had a modern aesthetic with the exception of the far wall, where a mural of a huge blue wave had been painted. The sound of water crashing against sand in a constant rhythm steadied her anxiety. This world, it seemed more like the one she knew. More realized, more comforting, more of a world and less of a place invented solely to torture her.

Looking at her arms, she saw she was in a new body. Not her own. Her skin was tan, and the ground looked a little further away, like someone had panned the camera. And–to her chagrin–she’d once again appeared in a wet diaper.

Are you fucking kidding me? 

Even now, she couldn’t escape the humiliation Bala had inflicted on her.

She didn’t exactly want to snoop, but she wanted to catch herself up as quick as she could, so she began to explore. On the coffee table in front of the couch, she saw a laptop. She could see the icon of a web browser. Good, they have internet here. Perfect.

Walking over to the desk, she sat. 

Ai wanted to go to Google, or whatever equivalent search engine they had in this world. She could look up the year, what country she was in, see if she could find information about support for…

What will I pretend to be? A lost immigrant? An amnesiac? 

Whatever she might have done, she didn’t have an opportunity, because her attention was stolen by a word document open on the computer. 

“Academy J, by Mia Moore.” 

Though she had told herself not to snoop, she saw the first couple paragraphs in her peripheral vision, and after that, she couldn’t look away. 

I blew on my coffee, trying to cool it down to a temperature where I could chug it. I’d already pushed deadlines back more times than I was comfortable, I had to get this anthology finished, but the stories weren’t playing nice.

Maybe I could talk to Blossom about it, but I wanted to surprise her. If the characters kept taking on lives of their own, though, refusing to go where I wanted them to, I didn’t know if I could get this done in time. 

I’d stopped at a cliffhanger, but I needed to get back to it. Get this story done, then finish the others. It’d already lost everything kinky, and I was unsure of where to take it from here, but it needed to get done, and I didn’t want the stress of deadlines to take the fun from the story. 

Walking in, I saw Blossom at my computer, reading–

“Hey, I said I wanted it to be a surprise. I thought you just wanted to have some diaper time while I wrote?”

She spun, eyes widening. “Who the fuck are you?”

"What?  Blossom, what's wrong?" I wouldn't say I was the most perceptive person in the world, but Blossom had never spoken to me like that before.  Even when she was terse, she was level headed, with a point to make.  Had I done something wrong?  Was it the story? "Weren't you going to change or something?"

Tears were in her eyes, and she looked ready to scream, or like she might be having a panic attack. “You–this is–how do you know what’s in my head?” 

“Blossom–”

“Don’t call me that!” 

My heart was racing, but it would come in second place to my brain.  What had I done?  How could I fix it?  I hadn’t done anything to make her mad, had I? The only thing that changed was that Blossom was that she’d read the latest Academy Works. “Is…is it something in the story?” 

That set her off.

“You–” Tears streamed down her face now, unbidden. “You know everything I think. You know everything I do, even though you can’t, even though it didn’t even happen in this universe–tell me how.”

Not even my self-cynicism could keep up with Blossom.  I groped around in my mind for anything I could have done wrong, hoping I'd find something, literally anything.  It was so much better than the building confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

She stands up, gesturing furiously at the computer. “Here. This.” She points at the computer, reading aloud, reading each word as though it were a judicially ordered death sentence:

>>>Ai blinks, but the panic doesn’t set in until several seconds pass.
>>>(Where am I?)
>>>Sometimes, in the past, she’d woken up in an unfamiliar place. It always disoriented her, struggling in a foreign environment 

“It’s the story I’ve been working on, for the anthology, but you know that.”

I shook my head, trying my best to comprehend the insanity that had consumed everything I know. Distantly, I was aware that I probably sounded as unhinged as the situation felt. “It’s not a story, it’s my life.” 

“What? You’re not making sense.” Was this a joke?  If it was, it was pretty messed up, even for Blossom.  Had I stumbled into a scene or something?  I was ready to grab onto literally any answer.

“I got into that machine, and I was desperate to get anywhere else: away from that place, that–that Academy, I guess, and I got here and…what are you? The architect? Are you reading my mind and just writing down everything that happens?” 

“Blossom–”

“My name isn’t Blossom. It’s Ai.” 

I stared at her, uncomprehending. It didn’t make sense. How could she be Ai? I’d known her all this time, and…

I got a sinking feeling of fear, and of comprehension. The last thing I’d written, Ai had left her universe, come to another. 

It couldn’t be real, could it? 

Surely–

“I just make it all up,” I explained, trying to convince myself as much as her. “Nothing I write is real. It’s just a story.” 

“You–the ‘story’ you wrote, you tortured me. You humiliated me. Why?”

“Because it’s just a fantasy, just a story. Ai isn’t real!”

“I’m standing right here.” 

“If…” 

I felt insane. Playing along with the delusion, or engaging with the idea that this might all be true, but I don’t know how else to move this conversation forward. “If you’re really Ai, prove it.”

“How? You know everything I’ve ever thought.”

“Take off the diaper.”

She stares for a long moment, confused, then her eyes widen. “You want me to go away.”

“I’ll bring you back, I just…I need Blossom to tell me if it’s all real.”

“I don’t trust you. You hurt me.” 

“Okay, but…what else can we do?” 

Her eyes were red and tears streaked her face. The confusion and fury of the situation, trying to comprehend what was going on after…well, after she’d escaped from Academy J, probably, it’d all bled through her emotions. Finally, though, her shoulders slumped in defeat. 

“Promise.”

“I promise.” Of course I did, what else would I say?

It seemed to be good enough for her. Keeping her gaze on mine, she reached down and popped the tapes off her diaper. 

…

“Don’t worry, just breathe.” 

She looked at me, and I could see the point where Blossom left and Ai appeared. It transitioned subtly, but I knew Blossom’s face too well not to notice her expression shifting. Besides that, I’d left myself another clue. “So you believe me?”

“I do.” I swallowed. Believing her meant too many things about my world, it brought out too many existential fears, but I couldn’t disregard evidence when it was staring me in the face. 

“What did this Blossom person say that convinced you?” Ai asked, interrupting my train of thought.

“It’s not what she said, but…she had an idea,” I explained, turning around. “Since what I’d written apparently actually happened, sort of, in another universe…” 

Turning around, I pointed at my computer screen, emphasizing the new lines I’d written. 

>>>While Ai leaves, Aya gets an idea. Pressing a few buttons on the screen, she sends an additional bit of information through–she can change things, more than just copying minds. She changes the color of Ai’s eyes to pink, but only when she’s in control.

Ai read the line, then turned, looking at herself in the window reflection. Her eyes were bright pink. 

“So what are you?” she asked, turning to look at me. “What’s going on?” 

“I don’t know. I’m just a writer, I make stories for the internet, but…if you’re here…” Existentialism rose in me again. If Ai was a fictional character, and she was here, did that mean all fictional characters were real? Or did it just mean that I’d been creating universes when I wrote alone?

Or did it mean that I was just like her? A character? 

She frowns, an idea forming in her head. “If you can make things happen by writing, though…can we just ask the story to explain everything?”

My eyes widened. Of course–of course. “You think so? I mean–sure, it worked once, but–” Turning to my laptop, I readied my fingers to type. “So…what do I say, anyways?”

“Make Aya send a book, I guess. One that answers all of our questions.”

Simple. And–if it worked, that’d mean I’d be able to do more. My excitement started to build, and I typed quickly, frantically. The prose was awful, it was contrived and as thoughtless as the most low-effort fanfictions, but I didn’t care about the quality.

>>>Aya has another idea, and sends through a magical book that can answer any question, ensuring that Ai won’t be confused anymore.

“That’s it.” I hit enter, and a moment later, the book appeared on my desk. Flipping to the first page–

(Hold on. No. This is wrong. What the hell was I thinking? Let’s figure this out.)

…

Ai blinked awake. She’d become disturbingly used to the experience of finding herself in a new place, a new world, and she took in her surroundings with speed. 

It didn’t take long, because she had no surroundings. The world wasn’t. She’d appeared in a complete void. 

Behind her was the only thing of substance–another person. Average height, slim build, he wore a onesie with a full, drooping diaper beneath, but seemed to barely notice.

His ears had the slightest tapering point to them. 

“Who are you?” Ai asked, because what else was there to ask?

“That’s complicated,” he replied. “I’m…not sure how I want to handle this, honestly.” 

Ai was too smart not to make a deduction, an intuitive guess. “Are you another writer, like Mia?”

He laughed. “Dammit, this is the problem–If you weren’t so damned clever, things might’ve gone differently, but I couldn’t make you any other way. I can’t write idiots.” 

She faced him, stunned. Here he was, talking about how he’d made her, with a tone no more complex than if he’d talked about making a bowl of cereal. “You created me?” 

“No.” A thin smile curled his lips. “You’re on loan. Mia, too, though I didn’t ask for permission there, I just borrowed her because I didn’t know what else to do. I did try to follow in your creators’ footsteps, in their style–with a couple exceptions, I had to get a little pedantic revenge out where I could–but…I don’t know. They can be mean, really mean, but I don’t know if they’re worse than me.” 

“If you’re…I don’t know what you are, but if you’re so powerful…can you send me home?” Her eyes were wide, pleading. 

He looked back with a cool, calm stare. “Your creators and I were questioned, once, together: ‘Do you ever feel bad about what you do to your characters?’. They both said yes, instantly, without question. Of course they did, of course they had empathy for the suffering they inflicted.”

The statement hung in the air, and Ai couldn’t help but ask the obvious followup. “And you?”

“I said no.”

Ai swallowed and took a step back. In the void, that didn’t mean much, she had nowhere to go. “So why talk to me?” 

“It’s like I said, I don’t know what to do with you,” he replied with a shrug. “There’s no good outcome, not that I can see.”

“Send me home then. At least give me that.” Her chest stuck out a bit, posturing confidence. She had the courage to stick up to anyone, at least right now. 

“You don’t have a home, Ai. I never wrote it.” He shook his head. “And if I made you a place, gave you a happy ending where you can put all this behind you, what story would that be? It’d be an anticlimax. Worse than a cliffhanger, it’d be…well, it’d be lame. I had an idea, that you could end up in charge with Aya’s help, that she would tie down Bala and make her wet herself after every diaper change…it was too complicated to get to that ending, and didn’t feel in character. None of it worked.” 

“I don’t care.” 

“I do.” He shook his head, frowning a little. “And I wrote you clever. I wrote you smart, and stubborn, and as real as I could, but that means I can’t hurt you how I want. You’re too good for that, you ruined it, and I couldn’t make you compliant without breaking your character.” 

A moment of silence passed.

He studied her, thoughtful and curious. “Do you want to know why it doesn’t bother me, when I hurt you?” 

It was a hypothetical question. She answered regardless. “Yes.” 

“Because you’re not real. You’re a character, a puppet for me to play with. I make you dance, I make you cry, I make you beg, and then I, and my audience–your audience, really–we get to remember what happened to you. You’re just a vessel for surrogate experiences, for our fun.” 

She fell quiet for a long moment. “Like Bala.”

He shrugged. “I thought it was clever at the time. It’s not the same as reality, of course–it has to be intense, so intense that it’d be torture in real life, or else it’s too mild. I’d never want to be tied and bound and have my mind destroyed, but I want to remember it. My audience wants to remember it too, and they want the ending to stick with them.” 

“So…” she started, thinking about it for a long moment. “I’m fucked, then.”

“No. I went too far, I got too weird with it, I tried too many new things. The story’s kind of off the rails, and…well, shit. When it was my turn with the playroom, I really trashed the place, didn’t I? Anyone who comes after me’s not going to be able to do anything with it.” He looks around. “I didn’t bother deciding what this space should look like, either. Too much work for no real benefit.”

She stared at him, eyes watering a little. To have her reality stripped apart, to be told in no uncertain terms that her life was not her own, and that her fate would be decided by an uncaring being who enjoyed her pain, it broke her just a little. 

“I could stop the story here,” he admits. “Just give up. Walk away, and don’t come back.” 

“I’d just…be here?” she asked, looking around. “Alone” 

“No. You’d be…nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been there before. I gave you a different name, different trials, but it was you even then. And, when I got lost, you went away. If I put you down now, if I stop here, you’ll go back there.” 

“I don’t remember that.” 

“You wouldn’t. It’s not forgetting, though, it’s nonexistence.” 

Her posture slumped. 

Defeated, and yet…she had a little fire left in her. “So, don’t end the story, and don’t hurt me.”

“I don’t know how to do that.” He shook his head. “No story is better than a bad story. I can’t break character, I can’t undermine the world I made, and I can’t give you a happy ending.” 

“Then figure it out, asshole. You made me, or, well–someone else made me, but you say you’re the one making this happen, so you have to end it. If you try to give me a bad ending, if you keep hurting me, it’ll be like you said. I’ll ruin it. So you can’t break me, and you can’t change me without disappointing your ‘audience’–well, fuck your audience.” 

He gave her a warning look. “Careful. I like my audience. I love them, even. I want them to like this, because I care about them. I care about your creators, too, I…” Laughing, he added, “I wanted to impress them. That’s why I tried to do everything. But I started with the sex and the torture and the smut layed down thick, and then I got weird and experimental, and it’s been, what, ten thousand words now since anyone’s had a smutty thought?” 

“Please.” Her eyes were huge. “I just want to be able to…be.” 

“I know. If you didn’t want to stay an adult, to stay in charge of your mind, you wouldn’t make for a good protagonist, it’s just…I’ve got other people I need to worry about, and I’ve gone and made you so sympathetic that I can’t even hurt you properly.” 

She took a deep breath. Her resolve didn’t break, and he wished he could have the tenacity he’d given her. “Okay. Tell it to me. All of it. Everything you wanted to do. Maybe I’ll think of something you hadn’t.” 

He laughed at her. “That’s not how this works. You can only be smarter than me by being faster, by coming up with clever ideas quickly, you can’t think of things I don’t know.” 

“Do it anyway. Prove yourself right.” 

Though he didn’t know exactly what this would result in, he followed through with the idea anyway, just to fill another half page. “Well…fine. I never figured exactly how to line up with the world of the Academy, but the short version is, Bala wants to be free, to be cared for, to be…a baby, sort of. She doesn’t want autonomy, but she has to have it, because–” He shrugged. “Because it’s a bad story if she can just make the kind of universe she wants to live in. There needs to be conflict, get it?” 

“Okay. So…you make her what she wants.” 

“How so? I didn’t set it up at all, there’s no foreshadowing, nothing.” 

“I don’t know, that’s your job.” 

“And your job is to be the victim. To have a bit of hope, to have a chance at escape, but to ultimately be the surrogate for our fantasies. Bala can steal your mind, she can make you the victim, because it’s hot when you can’t say ‘no’.” 

“You know, this is going to look pretty fucking pretentious if you don’t have a good ending, not after all this.” 

“Unless I just don’t publish you anywhere.” 

“I don’t think you’re going to keep this buried.” 

“You’re right.” 

She shrugged. “Okay. So if you need it to be hot, why not just…make it work differently?”

“Change the rules in the middle of the story? That’s not up to my standards.” 

“Don’t change the rules. Write a better story.” 

He knew where she was going with this–of course he did–but he still frowned. “I’ve never been criticized by my own character before.” 

“Can you do that, though?” she asked, eyes sparkling with hope. “Try again? Give me an ending where I’m happy?”

“Huh,” he said, tilting his head a bit. “You know, I…I’m sorry, but I can’t.” 

Hope dashed, her jaw drops open. “Why?” 

“Frankly? I’m busy. I’ve got more projects on my plate, and this one is already overdue. I can’t just start over from scratch.” 

“You’re fucking kidding me.” 

“It’s okay. I’m not going to leave you like this. I’m not the only one borrowing characters out here, and, well…maybe someone can do a better job than me.” 

“So you’re just going to pass the buck?” 

“Yup. Don’t worry, it’s…” his face sours slightly. “Okay, maybe you should be worried, a little, but you won’t remember any of this. Mia’s going to forget, too. I’ll just have to be sloppy, there, to write in a retcon, because otherwise your creators will have a fuck of a time trying to write after this.”

“Promise me there’s hope,” Ai looked him in the eye, pleading. 

“I promise. I don’t know what she’s planning, but I know she does happy endings sometimes.” 

Ai nods. “Promise me one more thing. Don’t forget me.”

“If I did my job right, nobody will.” 

...

Author notes:

I'm so thankful to "Mia Moore" for letting me write in her universe! It's an incredible honor to be invited to work on this project, and I hope that I did justice the setting and characters that she* created.

If you want to check out my other stuff and support my writing, I've got a Ream! And a substar!

[Mia Moore]

@PeculiarChangeling - I could never have imagined what you had planned for this story...  you made a universe where Ai and Bala are just characters in a story, which is exactly what they are for so many people.  It's such a wonderfully creative (and totally wild!) meta analysis of writers and characters.  That we create things for an audience, sometimes for ourselves, but what we make often becomes its own thing.  It becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  And isn't that what this whole Academy II project is about?

When Sophie pitched you as a writer on this project, I was excited.  You've been a big inspiration for me.  Actually, when I need help with some of the sexier parts of Academy Works (specifically in A:A and A:M), I turned to your writing to help me through things I'm not great at describing.  And then when Sophie told me what your ideas were, I was anxious.  Because this is more meta than I wanted.  It's weird, and it doesn't cater to the readers.  I was scared of letting this story be something I didn't want it to be.  But I'm glad I did.  You told a story I was too afraid to tell.

Honestly... not to be too sentimental or whatever... but Academy Works has totally changed my life.  I've found out so many things about myself writing this series.  Through Ai and Bala, I've been able to look at parts of myself that I consider bad or evil, things I hate about me, and see them through a more empathetic lens.  And also, without Academy Works, I never would have met my girlfriend.  

Speaking of... I am extremely embarrassed (and flattered maybe???) that you made me a character in your story.  (I am flashing back to Sophie asking me "can I share some personal info about you with the other writers?" not knowing it would matter this much!!!)  But Blossom is going to be over the moon!!  

Anyway, I'm not that wordy.  The fact that I've written so much in one comment is pretty out of character.   So I'll wrap this up.

Thank you for your contribution to the series!  Thank you for your contribution to me.  Now I have to rethink how I'm going to end Academy Works.  

~Mia Moore~

[Sophie ♥]

I knew this was coming before you posted it, Penn.  But I gotta just jump in here to say.  One, I am never going to let Mia forget that when you wrote her life, it's in the format of an S&P story!! 😈  Two, you did a REALLY good job imitating our style.  

Also, I wanna be the first to say it.  Your story is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥