Where Am I Going

A place where users can post their wonderful stories.

Where Am I Going

Postby LilJennie » Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:18 pm

New story by Miki and me – I'm afraid it meanders a bit, but I hope you still like it. – Jennie

Where Am I Going

by LilJennie and Miki Yamuri

----------------------------------------------------------------

“So, can I see your ITA?” asked Kelly. “My parents let me pick one out. I got a JOE-23.” Kelly’s ITA was taller than she was, but male, and kind of pale-skinned and gothy-looking. I don’t know why she picked him.

“Sure, I guess,” I said. “I didn’t get to pick mine out. My parents just got me a CARLY-10. I like her OK so far. I mean, she’s got all the features.” CARLY was my big high school graduation gift. Of course. Everybody got one. “CARLY, this is Kelly. She just wants to look at you, OK?”

“Of course, Christina,” she said. CARLY looked at Kelly with a smile. CARLY was kind of short. Of course, so was I, and that’s probably why Mom and Dad had picked her out. She looked like she could share clothes with me, but of course that was silly, because an ITA could just generate whatever clothes it was programmed to wear. Holograms or something. Right now CARLY was wearing some of her default clothes – a white T-shirt and a black skirt.

“So cute,” Kelly said, and CARLY reacted by smiling. “You haven’t gone clothes shopping for her?”

“No, I haven’t had a chance,” I said, blushing a bit. “I’ve been so busy with college visits. Don’t worry, CARLY, I’ll download lots of new clothes for you soon!”

“Don’t worry, Christina, I’m fine with whatever!” CARLY said to me. That cheerful voice. I wondered if I could change it. Probably – so much of an ITA was customizable. The one constant was their shape – and their built-in functions, like being a phone, playing music, net access, calendar and alarm clock, and all that boring basic stuff. “Christina, weather alert – it’s likely to rain here in about 15 minutes.”

At the same time, JOE-23 was telling Kelly the same thing. “Kelly, weather alert – rain is likely in this location in about 15 minutes.” Their wording was slightly different, but the meaning was the same.

“Maybe we should go over to Tamara’s place early,” Kelly said.

“OK, sure, we were going over there anyway. I wonder what kind of ITA she got. We can finish our drinks as we walk.”

I got up. CARLY and JOE followed us. They could sit down, but the outdoor café we were at had such small tables that we’d just had them stand. They used the same amount of power either way.

As we walked, I talked to CARLY about outfits. “CARLY, do you have a favorite color?” I asked her.

“Oh, gosh,” she said. “I’m not sure. I mean, you know that you can change my skin, hair, and eye color any time you want, so I can match any outfit you get me!”

“No, I meant – never mind.” It was too tempting to think of ITAs as if they were people. I kept forgetting that she didn’t have favorites. Or … at least, that’s what they said. “Hey CARLY, can you show us some ITA fashion trends?”

“Sure!” As she walked, her plain black and white outfit morphed into a trendier white top with off-center red buttons, and her black skirt got longer but now had a slit that went up its side. “This is currently the most popular outfit at ITA All the Way.”

“Oh, cool!” said Kelly. “We can shop and walk at the same time? JOE, show me some of the most popular outfits for ITA guys.”

“Of course,” said JOE. His simple white T-shirt and black shorts morphed as well, and as we walked Kelly and I explored different outfits for our ITAs. I guess we could’ve gone in a car, but it was a nice day, and we couldn’t have shopped – well, one of us couldn’t have.

I ended up buying CARLY several new outfits, and Kelly got some new virtual clothes for JOE. They were a lot less expensive than clothes for people! Kelly said, “Hey, didn’t I hear that there were other downloads for ITAs?”

“Are there?” I wondered. “CARLY, are there other downloads for ITAs besides clothes?”

“There sure are!” she replied. “There are different ‘skins’ – well, they call them that, but they include changes to our facial features, hair and eye color. There are also makeup packs that include face makeup and nail color. And there are sim packs too.”

“Sim packs?” I asked.

“Yup! Those are like virtual games you can play,” CARLY explained. “For example, there’s one that simulates when I get hungry or need attention. I don’t really need to eat or get lonely, of course, but if I were running that game, it would seem like it. It’s kind of like those ‘Tamagotchi’ toys that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And there are others, of course.”

“Huh,” said Kelly. “Is there a list of them?”

JOE replied, “There are many. In fact, because of the ITA Open Framework, anyone can use the framework’s API to write one.”

“Yup!” agreed CARLY. “And because of that, there are a lot of them out there, many of them free! But of course, some of them are better written than others.”

“It might be better to search for something and then browse the site you find it on,” said JOE.

“Well, OK,” I said. “CARLY, search for sim packs about …” I saw a butterfly on a nearby flower. “Butterflies.”

“Searching … Here’s what I found.” There was now a list floating in the air in front of me. CARLY had really good holographic projectors. She was moving, and so was I, but the list moved with me.

“Butterfly Catcher?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“According to its description, my projectors generate holographic butterflies for you to catch, and each one you catch earns you points. With points you can purchase virtual butterflies that can follow me around, sit on your shoulders, or do tricks.”

“That sounds fun!” I said. “I want to try that one!”

“OK,” said CARLY. “Downloading Butterfly Catcher.” Soon there was a little yellow butterfly flying around, and I was giggling and trying to grab it. Kelly was laughing and watching me act like an idiot, but in no time at all we were at Tamara’s house.

Tamara answered her door. “Oh! Hi guys! Um, why don’t you come in and hang out in the living room? My dad’s at work, but Mom’s here. I’m still getting my ITA’s outfit all set up.”

So we were in Tamara’s family’s living room. “Oh! You’ve let a butterfly in,” said Tamara’s mom, but then I caught it, and a little floating number “+1” appeared where it had been for a moment. “Oh, no, that’s one of those games an ITA can play, isn’t it? Haha! Isn’t that amazing? Mine just reads me books, remembers recipes, and keeps track of my calendar.”

“Are you done playing for now, Christina?” asked CARLY.

“Oh – yeah, thanks CARLY, no more butterflies for now,” I said.

“That’s right, you can download ebooks and read them to me, can’t you, JOE?” asked Kelly.

“Yes, I can,” said JOE. Kelly was having him search for ebooks. Meanwhile, I asked CARLY about other sim packs.

“Here’s a list of some other sim packs from the same eshop,” said CARLY, and another list appeared in the air in front of me.

“Let’s see … Candy Crunch … Cantaloupe Samurai … Coin Royalty … Cut the String … Danger Quest … Diaper Girl … Drawing in Air … wait, Diaper Girl?” I blushed for some reason. “Umm … what’s that?”

“It, er, makes me a … well, a diaper girl,” said CARLY. She was blushing as if this was embarrassing, which only intensified how embarrassing it was for me too, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Err, let’s talk about that one later,” I said quickly.

“OK,” said CARLY. “Do any other sim packs look interesting?”

“What’s Cut the String?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s a puzzle game,” she said. “There’s an array of objects hanging from strings, and you can move your fingers through the strings to cut them, but what you’re trying to do is …” It really didn’t seem as if she were reading from a script; it sounded as if she were paraphrasing the directions. Just as it seemed as if she were really embarrassed by that Diaper Girl one – was that intentionally written by the programmer, was CARLY embarrassed somehow, or was she picking that up from me? I wasn’t sure.

Then Tamara came down from her room with her ITA, MARY-22. She was wearing a reflective gold outfit that looked like something from sci-fi. The top wrapped around her chest, and the long gold skirt came down to below her knees, but both had fringes that ended in tiny multicolored lights that somehow sent reflections all over the room. Her eyes had reflective gold eye shadow, and she had similar gold lipstick and nail polish, as well as a lot of gold jewelry. We were all stunned by her look. “Wow, Tamara,” asked Kelly, “did you put all that together?”

“Yeah!” Tamara replied as she and MARY joined us in the living room. “I shopped around and found all these different pieces. Sorry to keep you waiting – I had to find the perfect makeup pack to go with the outfit and jewelry!”

“I guess I forget that they can do things that real clothes can’t,” I said. “At least, I don’t think there’s a way to do that.” I looked at MARY’s sparkly fringes more closely.

“There is,” said Tamara’s mother, “but it’s expensive – almost as much as buying another ITA. There are projectors that you wear, printed on top of a skin-tight leotard, and they can make it look like you’re wearing whatever clothes or jewelry you can imagine. But the problem is that you can’t wear anything over them – so they’re not warm at all if it’s cold out, for example. And that’s all they do; they can’t play games or surf the net. There are still some problems to work out, so they’re not as popular as ITAs are.”

So we spent the afternoon talking and trying out different looks and sim packs for our new ITAs, and Tamara’s mom showed us her ITA, JUDY-12, whom she’d had for some time and already had quite a lot of useful apps.

That evening, after I’d said goodbye to Tamara and Kelly, I was finally alone in my room and had a chance to look at … the thing I hadn’t wanted to look at in public earlier. “CARLY, can you tell me more about that … Diaper Girl sim pack?” I felt myself blush, even though nobody was here but an ITA.

“Yes, well, it … it simulates me wearing a diaper and … having no control over my, um, bladder,” CARLY said with a blush and a stammer. “I would need attention as if I were a baby at times, and I might even cry. There would be tools like toys for me to play with, a bottle to feed me with, a pacifier to help me calm down, and, of course, a diaper, which you would have to change regularly. There are several compatible outfits … and they all … uh … do nothing to hide my diaper. Christina, I’m not sure about this one …”

“Well, I mean, what harm can it do to try it here, when it’s just us?” I asked, but I was blushing too. “It sounds … super cute …”

“I … suppose?” said CARLY. It really sounded as if she were unsure about this. How intelligent were ITAs, really? She sure seemed as if she were embarrassed about this. And I would be!

“Let’s try it, Carly,” I said. “If you really don’t like it, I can delete it, and we can pretend it never happened.”

“Well, all right … downloading Diaper Girl …” There was a download meter above her head, and when it was full, it disappeared, and she said, “Well, here goes.”

Suddenly her clothes morphed into an adorable pink and white babydoll dress with lots of lace, and beneath it she was wearing a white diaper. It wasn’t just any diaper, though. It looked like a large babyish disposable diaper, with tapes and cute butterfly patterns printed on it, and it had a thermometer-style meter on it, kind of like her download meter, right on the front, between the tapes.

“Oh my g …” I said. “That’s … so adorable …”

“Oh no … you like it,” said CARLY, sounding worried. “I’m not sure I do …”

“But … I mean, we don’t have to play it in public,” I said. “What happens if I feed you a bottle?” I then realized what I’d just asked and blushed.

“Um … well, the bottle is right here,” she said, and I noticed there was a large baby bottle that looked like it was full of milk – a hologram, of course – sitting on my desk. I reached for it, and of course I didn’t feel anything, but it moved with my hand.

“You should probably … sit down over here,” I said. I sat on my bed and patted my lap. She came over and sat down on my lap. She didn’t weigh as much as a human her size and shape would, but she wasn’t light either. I held up her upper back and head and held up the bottle to her mouth with the other hand. She started to drink the bottle like the baby doll toys I used to have when I was little. “Oh … wow … so cute …” I said. She just blushed and drank from the bottle until all the milk was gone. Or simulated holographic milk. I set the bottle down next to me. The next time I looked, it had disappeared.

“I feel … full …” she said. Out of habit I patted her on the back, which I guess I used to do with my baby doll toys. And she burped a cute little burp. “Oh! ‘Scuse me,” she said.

“You are just too cute!” I said. “You’re like a super-high-tech version of the old Baby Real doll that I used to have. But … yeah, I dunno. I’ve never seen anybody else running this sim pack on their ITA – or at least not in public. I’m afraid I’d look like a little girl with her baby doll.”

“Um, Christina, you might want to look at the site for the Diaper Girl sim pack,” said CARLY.

“I might?” I asked. “OK, show me.”

She projected it on a holoscreen, which I could scroll by flicking a finger through the floating rectangle. “It’s very … um … what? Sexy? Fetish? Wait, is this a thing that pervy guys do to their girl ITAs? Ick! Oh no! I’m sorry, CARLY! Eww eww eww … are there any girls who do this with their ITAs? And hey, why is it Diaper Girl? Why isn’t there a Diaper Boy one?”

“Well … there is,” said CARLY. “It’s got a separate page, because it’s got a different … umm … target audience? Mostly gay guys?”

“Oh, I see … I guess. But … really, are there girls who use this with girl ITAs?”

“Sure there are,” said CARLY. “Here, I can bring up some forum posts …” Most of the posts were from people with names like “Strict Mommy Mildred” or “Nursery Mommy Selena,” but they weren’t really talking about their ITAs; they seemed to be trying to attract the attention of men who wanted to … be babied?

“OK, this doesn’t seem right,” I said.

“No, you’re right; those are probably spambots – let me do some more filtering,” said CARLY. “I can … oopsie!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I … you might want to check my … settings,” said CARLY, blushing brightly.

“Is it your diaper?” I asked. I looked at her diaper. It had a slightly less bright white look down around the bottom of it, and the little diaper meter had moved. It looked about a third of the way to full now. “What are your settings?”

Another floating window appeared full of sliders, pulldown menus and checkboxes. “So you’re set to not have any control over your … um, peepees, but you do notice when it happens, but you’re not allowed to ask for a change? That’s not right … here, you can be set to … what’s this, you can be able to hold it but not for long and get upset when you finally lose control and wet? Or you can always almost make it to the potty? Or you can be like a total baby and not even notice when it happens so I have to check you a lot?”

CARLY nodded, blushing more. “And a lot of variations in between.”

“And … I can set how embarrassed you are by it? Let’s see … right now you’re set to Medium Embarrassed to everything: being in diapers, talking about your diapers, being seen in your diapers, wetting your diapers … but there’s Super Embarrassed, Slightly Embarrassed, Neutral, and … then there’s Slightly Proud, Medium Proud and Super Proud? What if I turn you to Super Proud to be in diapers?”

“That means I’m going to be the best diaper girl ever for you, Christina! I’m always going to tell everyone that I’m your diaper girl, and you’re the best mommy ever, and whenever I wet my diaper I’ll be so proud that I’m being a good diaper girl and wetting my diaper like a good diaper girl should, and I will tell everyone all about it!” CARLY was suddenly not blushing at all but very happy.

“Yeah, let’s dial that back,” I said, changing the settings to something less extreme.

“Sorry, Christina,” said CARLY, “it’s just how the program works.”

“It’s … alright,” I said. “CARLY, I have to wonder whether you really have feelings and how much is the software. I mean, you also don’t even have a bladder or really drink anything.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t really have a bladder; all of that is simulated. But also, well, the pride and embarrassment from this app is sort of an overlay on top of my base personality. I have feelings, or rather, I’m programmed to simulate them, which is as close as an ITA gets, I guess.” CARLY shrugged.

“So, how do you feel about being in diapers, for real?”

“I … really do find this whole program pretty embarrassing,” she said. “I mean, wouldn’t you?”

“I, well …” I actually hadn’t thought about it before that moment. If I … were in diapers? I felt weird. “I … yes, I would find it really embarrassing, especially if everybody could see them like that. I’d worry that people would think I was a baby, that I couldn’t take care of myself, that I was helpless and incapable. I’d worry they wouldn’t take me seriously. I’m going to college, after all, and I’ve got to make a good impression so I get good grades and graduate with a high GPA.” Changing the subject to academics got my mind off the fact that I was very distracted by how I felt about the thought of being in diapers myself.

“Those are all things that I really want to help you with, Christina!” said CARLY. “I have a lot of software that can help you. And I really don’t want you to look like a little girl with her baby doll. At least, not in front of your teachers or friends.”

“That sounds like the real CARLY,” I said. “But … somehow I do find this Diaper Girl app really fun. I just don’t like you feeling bad about it. So I’m setting you to Slightly Proud to be in diapers, Slightly Embarrassed to talk about them, Slightly Embarrassed to be seen in them, and Neutral to wetting in them … also I’m setting you to having … no control, zero bladder capacity, and not noticing when you wet.”

“Just like a little baby!” CARLY giggled as I tapped OK and the settings took effect.

As I browsed the net more, CARLY toddled around, crawled on my bed, and sucked on her virtual pacifier, one of the holographic items that had come with the app. I noticed her now and then – she seemed to be the perfect little babydoll any little girl would love. I noticed that the meter on her diaper was gradually inching toward full, but she didn’t, even though her diaper was swelling a bit, which made the whole thing seem so much more precious.

Then I perused more sites using search parameters like “Adult Diaper Girl.” To my utter amazement, there were many sites and many people offering just as many infant items for adult human women to wear or play as there were for real infants – maybe even more.

I found cribs, playpens, strollers, even high chairs made specially for adult babies. The more I searched and looked through the items, the more intrigued I became in the outfits and other clothing items I saw. Many were just adorably cute and made me tingle when I thought of CARLY in them … or …

I came across several places that also had sim packs for ITAs that would make them act like Mommies or Nanas who would care for human adult babies as well. I looked sideways at CARLY as she sat on the floor in her adorable dress and diaper and played with several of the holographic toys that had come with the Diaper Girl program.

Many thoughts began to run through my mind. The more they came, the redder I became in the face until CARLY happened to notice. She got up from the floor just as any toddler would and toddled over to me.

CARLY said in a slightly different tone and cuter voice, “Is you OK? Why comes you blushin’ so?”

I looked at my adorable ITA and said softly with an obvious embarrassed tone, “I .. I really am intrigued by what I’m seeing. I sorta of would ... Umm ... you know, want to try it out, maybe?”

“Twy out?” asked CARLY, one index finger cutely touching her lips, looking confused. “You wanna bea Diaper Girl too?”

“No! I mean … I don’t know, and how could I find out without trying it? You know?” I stammered. Why was I feeling this way? I didn’t know. “S-some of these things are kind of expensive, though.”

CARLY’s base personality came through for a moment. “Many such items are available in free sample packs! If you like, I can search for you and order whatever I can find as a free sample. Would you want me to do that?”

“I … uh …” That’s right, ITAs were also programmed to be excellent shopping assistants and could help find bargains and free offers.

“It would be much more economical if you knew which products were best for you before spending money on them!” she said brightly.

That was hard to argue with. “S-sure, OK,” I said uncertainly. “I, um …”

She sat back down on the floor and went back to playing with her toys. I remembered I was supposed to be looking after this Diaper Girl. “H-hey, CARLY,” I said. “Come here, and let me check your diaper.”

“OK Mommy,” she said. My heart skipped a beat. Why did it feel so strange when she called me that? She stood up and toddled over to me.

The meter on her diaper wasn’t at two thirds yet, but maybe it was time to find out how this diaper change thing worked. “Hmm, I think it’s time for a diaper change,” I said. “How does this work?”

“I lie down on something, like your bed here,” said CARLY. “Then it depends on settings. Right now you have it set on the PG-rated default setting, but there are also R and X rated settings, which you can access because you are 18 or older.”

“Let’s stick with the default for now,” I said. The other settings could wait. “Oh, look, helpful holograms.” Little moving green arrows were pointing at her diaper’s tapes. I reached out and pinched at them with my fingers as if to unfasten them. Suddenly there was a fresh diaper on her, amid a cloud of white baby powder, and her new diaper’s meter was at zero.

“Oooo thank oo Mommy, that lots better!” said CARLY cutely.

“No leaky diapers for you,” I said. “Just a leaky baby.”

CARLY giggled and nodded, and sat up on the bed, continuing to play with her toys.

“Christina, time for bed,” came Mom’s voice from downstairs.

“OK Mom!” I called back. “Err, I guess we might have to pause this app,” I told CARLY.

There was another cloud of white holographic baby powder, and CARLY stood up, dressed in the outfit I’d bought her while shopping earlier that day. “Like all sim packs, that one can be paused and returned to anytime you like, Christina,” she said helpfully. Everything had vanished, so if Mom looked in, it wouldn’t look like anything had happened. I didn’t know how I’d explain turning my ITA into a very expensive Baby Real doll, and I certainly didn’t want Mom finding the Diaper Girl app’s website and the other things it linked to.

“OK, CARLY, why don’t you plug in and go into Night Mode?” I said. ITAs needed power, and they got some during the day by passing by charging pylons and collecting solar energy, but if I wanted CARLY to start with a full charge in the morning, she should use her charger.

“OK, Christina,” she said, walking over to the white plastic square on the floor in the corner of my room and standing on it. “Good night.” Her eyes closed, her clothing and hair vanished, and she stood still, arms at her side. She was suddenly like a statue, gray as cement and unmoving. I got my pajamas on – really just a change of underwear and an extra-long night shirt – and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and put my contacts into their cleaner.

All night, I had the strangest, but very pleasant dreams of being an infant and being cared for by CARLY as my mommy. I loved the outfits and the gentle care CARLY gave me. I especially loved the bottle feedings and the messes at meal time.

When I woke up, I was highly embarrassed to find myself in the middle of a large wet spot in my bed. I had actually wet the bed and didn’t even remember when it happened. I quickly got up and stripped off my wet clothes and dashed to the bathroom to dump them in the hamper and to shower quickly.

My motions brought CARLY out of standby mode. I heard her ask in her sweet voice, “It seems you’ve had an accident. Don’t worry, lots of adults have them. Would you like me to change the bed?”

I felt a wave of embarrassment wash through me as I replied sheepishly, “Please. And if you could wash them and my wet things before Mom finds out, I would be most appreciative.”

I could hear CARLY stripping the sheets off the bed as she replied, “I’m already on it. They should be clean and dry and the bed made before your parents wake up. I’ve made a note of their habits.”

As I showered, I saw CARLY quickly come into the bathroom, collect all the items in the hamper, and vanish quick as a flash. By the time I got out and was toweling off, she had returned with fresh panties and a pair of my short shorts and a strappy top.

CARLY said, “Here’s a coordinated outfit. Don’t worry, your parents won’t notice a thing. I’ll have to keep a close watch for the drone-mail arrival today though.”

I looked at CARLY askance for a moment. “Why?”

Carly replied, “Because you had me order all the free sample items I could find. They will be arriving at various times during the next few days.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, starting to blush a little. “How many … things did you end up ordering?”

“I found 53 free offers,” CARLY replied brightly. “The majority are sample packs of two to four diapers that should fit. There are several other items, though. I can continue to be on the lookout for other free offers that might appear, if you like.” By this time I could tell I was blushing several shades of crimson. I hoped Mom didn’t find out. I would be so embarrassed, and I know I really couldn’t explain it to her in a reasonable way.

I dressed as quickly as I could in hopes that I could get to the mail pad before Mom. Fortunately, Mom was busy in the kitchen making breakfast, and CARLY had beat me to the mail pad. The mail drone arrived with many packages for me. CARLY managed to pick them all up and carry them to my room without Mom even suspecting.

After breakfast I finally got to see what had arrived. My eyes got huge and my mouth fell open as I saw the many diapers, pull-ups, cute lacy little plastic panties, toys, and other items various companies had offered as free samples. CARLY was still in the process of opening the packaging and putting everything in stacks on my desk. “All … of this was free?” I asked.

“Yes,” CARLY said. “Some, especially the disposable diapers and pull-ups, are clearly offered to allow potential customers to try the product and ensure they purchase the correct size. Others are discontinued or superseded items offered in an attempt to get customers’ attention.”

“Well … this can’t stay here on my desk,” I said. “I don’t want Mom and Dad to see them. I’m supposed to be going off to college, not turning back into a b-baby.” I blushed at the very thought. My bed was still without sheets; the mattress was still drying from where CARLY had scrubbed the wet spot. At least it didn’t smell like anything. She’d gotten it really clean.

“I understand,” CARLY said. “I will be sure to move them all out of sight. Do you want me to keep searching for any other free offers that should appear?”

“I … yes, but you have to be careful,” I said.

“Understood. I’ll monitor the delivery drones closely and be sure to obtain deliveries before anyone else. It’s good that your parents’ ITAs seem to obtain their deliveries only when asked to.”

So. I had a whole bunch of different, um, things to try out. I didn’t know when I’d be able to do such a thing. I mean, what if Mom came knocking on my door and wanted me to go with her to the store, or even just wanted to talk to me about something, and I was in a diaper and basically nothing else? Dad was at work during the day most days, but Mom had irregular hours. I was going to have to wait until sometime when her job was going to have her out of the house for a while at the same time Dad was out. Luckily they always took their ITAs with them. No worries about being video recorded.

Meanwhile I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do all summer before it was time to pack up and move in at college. And I wanted to hang out with my friends before we all went our separate ways. They’d probably be home during breaks, but we weren’t going to the same schools, so we might find it hard to see each other.

“CARLY, can you call Kelly?” I asked.

“Sure,” CARLY said. A gray rectangle with a green phone symbol appeared in the air near her. Why was that thing called a phone symbol? It didn’t look like any phone I’d ever seen. Anyway, the word “Calling” appeared in white above it, and Kelly’s name below that.

Kelly’s face appeared in the rectangle. “Hi Christina,” she said. “What’s up? Looking to hang out today?”

“I’d love to,” I said. “I’m worried we won’t see each other much once we go off to school.”

“Yeah, me too,” she said. “My mom’s got me trying to find a summer job, though. I gotta do some of these applications. But then once I get ‘em sent in, she’ll get off my back. How about … in an hour? At the café?”

“Sounds good! See you then!” I said.

So I had an hour. But not an hour when I could try any of my new, um, things, because Mom was home. “CARLY, continue the Diaper Girl app,” I said. Suddenly CARLY was in her cute babydoll top and really thick diaper. She played on the floor, and I fed her a bottle, and it was just so adorable. The thing was, unlike the things I was dying to try for myself, CARLY’s diapers and toys could vanish in an instant.

By the time an hour had passed, the bed was finally dry enough that I could put sheets on it. CARLY helped, after I changed her diaper. She could have made the bed herself, I guess, but this way my bed wasn’t suspiciously sheetless for any longer than it had to be.

“Going to meet Kelly at the café,” I said, grabbing my purse and making sure my wallet and keys were in there.

“OK, just be home before supper,” said Mom from her home office.

Kelly was waiting for me outdoors at the café when I got there.

We both hugged. “Hi Kelly!” I said.

Kelly waved to CARLY and said “Hi, CARLY. I love that cute dress. It’s adorable.”

CARLY smiled and did a small curtsy, “It’s called a Princess dress.” She giggled like a little girl. “I like the way it looks, too. The hem’s a bit short, but it’s in style.”

Kelly replied as she waved her hand at a rather handsome young man with her. “I’ve been having JOE dressed like most of the guys my age so people think he’s either my brother or my boyfriend. I have the Brother package running now, and it is really nice to have a brother to watch over me.”

I said, “Hi JOE, whatcha know?” We all laughed. “I hope you’re taking good care of Kelly.”

JOE replied pleasantly, “I do my best.” He walked to CARLY and took her hand. “It’s good to see you again as well.”

Carly blushed so red I thought she was going to burst something as she said shyly, “Hi, JOE. I’m happy to see you too.”

We all entered the cafe. I noticed JOE was actually still holding CARLY’S hand, and she was acting like a little girl on her first date, red-faced blushes and all. Not only was she dressed really cute, but the two of them really looked like a guy on a date with a really pretty girl.

Kelly and I sat while the two ITAs stood, held hands, and acted like they were in love or something.

I said to Kelly, “Looks like CARLY’s got herself a boyfriend.”

Kelly took a bite of her sandwich, then said, “It does look like JOE has taken a real liking to her.” We both laughed. Kelly continued, “Where on earth did you find such a cute dress for her?”

I took a sip of my soda and replied, “CARLY found this site on the internet. It has lots of really cute things.”

Kelly replied, “Yeah, JOE found a site with alot of good facial creams and makeup.”

“Oh, let me see. I want to find ... “

As we ate lunch and JOE and CARLY looked at each other with puppy dog eyes, Kelly and I looked over several websites at the many items available. Time passed quickly as we enjoyed each other’s company, looked over many things and even made purchases. The fact that we were using our ITAs’ online shopping capabilities didn’t seem to matter to their personalities. They can multitask quite well.

“What apps have you tried, Christina?” asked Kelly.

“I … what?” I stammered.

“Well, you know, sim packs, or whatever they’re really called. I’ve got this one called Brother, like I said. It does some kind of personality change that doesn’t really change him but on the surface it does?”

“Personality overlay,” I said.

“Yeah, that,” said Kelly. “I mean, I can stop the app and it’s just like he never ran it. Then start it back up and it’s like it never stopped. Like he’s got two modes.”

“Ohhhh,” I said. “I don’t know, CARLY’s so cute, I, uh, I’m not s-sure she could be any cuter …” I was sure I was blushing brightly. The thought of anybody finding out about the app I’d been running on CARLY … let alone the one I wanted to try running on her ...

“Well, that babydoll dress she’s got on sure adds to the cuteness factor,” said Kelly. She giggled. “I remember how you went wild with outfits for that Baby Real doll you got when we were kids. You were obsessed with making her as cute as she could be! It was adorable!”

I giggled nervously. “I … I kind of remember that, I think? I definitely remember that doll, but … was I all crazy about outfits for her?”

“Oh, yeah, you were all about trying to get or make cute bonnets and booties that matched her dresses, and you decorated the little toy pacifiers that came with her to match …” Kelly was grinning. “I mean, yeah, I had my dolls too, and I’m pretty sure I liked dressing them up, but you were fixated on that one doll and going all the way with the cute! I’m not surprised you’re dressing CARLY up. Makes me wish I’d gotten a girl one – though I can dress JOE up all I want, I guess.”

The conversation had moved out of dangerous territory. “Yeah! I can totally think of ways to dress him up cute! I mean, even if you don’t want to put cute dresses on him. And no, I don’t mean dressing him all sexy. Unless?” I gave her a sidelong glance.

“Oh, myyyy,” she said with a giggle. “I don’t think my parents would approve of that idea. But hey, cute dresses on JOE. Hmm.” She looked at him. He was talking to CARLY.

“Can’t they share information instantly?” I asked.

“I thought so … so why are they talking?” she wondered quietly.

“Maybe it’s just a personality thing, to make us more comfortable, so it’s less weird,” I guessed.

“Could be,” said Kelly. “Anyway, I can’t wait to see what else CARLY shows up wearing.” I suddenly blushed again, thinking about what she’d been wearing earlier. “There’s that blush again! What have you been putting on your ITA, Christina?” She giggled. “Must be good.”

“What?” I couldn’t speak. “I … er …”

“Oh, never mind, I’m just teasing you,” said Kelly. “Unless?” She mimicked my sidelong glance.

“I’m just … uh, well …”

“It’s so cute to watch you try not to tell me stuff!” said Kelly. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna keep doing it. Whatever, I’m sure you’ll tell me eventually once you figure it out. Like when you figured out how to take off your bra without taking your shirt off first. You wouldn’t tell me until you’d mastered the technique, like it was some kind of girl martial arts.”

“I mean, I did figure it out,” I said.

“I know! And then you showed me, and that’s pretty amazing, let me tell you. The guys think it’s fascinating.”

“You show that to guys?”

“No, I’m making that up,” she said with a giggle. She probably was, too. Neither of us was dating anyone. What would be the point? We were both going off to school and wouldn’t see them again.

“Why’d you pick a Brother app for JOE?” I asked. “Do you really need somebody to look out for you?”

“Well … it was actually Mom’s idea,” said Kelly. “They got me JOE, and my only brother is Jayden, and he’s still in middle school.”

While Kelly and I ate lunch and perused the many shopping sites, I noticed that CARLY and JOE acted just like they were on a date. I thought to myself I was going to have to ask about that when we got home.

Time passed, as it has a habit of doing, and it started to get to be late afternoon. I said goodbye to Kelly as JOE and CARLY seemed to actually kiss goodbye.

When we got home, I asked CARLY, ” what’s up with you and JOE?”

She blushed several shades of red, then replied softly, “I .. .am really ... attracted to his interface. I’m sorry; if it offends you I will delete that interaction protocol.”

I repled with a chuckle, “No, no, it’s perfectly all right. I just didn’t know you had that written into your AI.”

CARLY giggled, “Technically, we don’t. But if we find a compatible AI programming, we do have the ability to interface with each other. It keeps our software updated and sometimes even adds new things to our list of apps.”

I had CARLY run the Diaper Girl app. She was so adorable as she sat on the bed and played with her plushie toys. I had her in just a diaper and plastic panties. I was really intrigued by the cute outfits and other items that had been sent to me to try out.

Just for fun, I put on one of the thick toddler daytime pullups and a pair of the lavender rumba panties with 3 rows of ruffles across the bottom. I had a smock top that had puffy sleeves and sort of looked like the cute dress CARLY had had on today at the café.

By the time I had put my hair up in ponytails and looked at myself in the mirror, my mouth fell open when I saw an adorable toddler girl looking back with the most amazed expression on her face.

As fate would have it. Mom walked in just then. “Christie, honey, dinner is …” She stopped talking as she saw me standing there turning beet red. Her expression went from surprise to a huge grin as she continued, “I mean, baby, time for din-din. Mommy has nice num-nums for you.” She held out her hand and wiggled her fingers.

It was all I could do to squeak out, “M mmm mom .. you … you’re not upset?”

She cooed pleasantly, “Upset? Now why on earth should I be upset at my baby girl?” Then she walked over, took me by the hand, and led me into the dining room. I was so glad Dad wasn’t home yet; I don’t think I could have stood the embarrassment.

“Now sit down here – I don’t have a bib or a high chair for you, but we can pretend if you want – and I’ll feed you your din-dins,” said Mom, pulling out a chair and trying to sit me down in it.

“I, wha, I’m confused, Mom …” I said, getting right into the chair she wanted me in – it was after all my usual chair at the table.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew you were studying a lot and sending out your college applications and stressing yourself out. I knew you were going to do something to let the stress out. I’m just glad you didn’t go out partying or something with kids who do drugs or drink alcohol. This is the most adorable way I can imagine to let go of the stressful big-girl world for a while! And, well, to me, it hasn’t been that long since you were a little bitty cute toddler.”

“I, er, yes,” I replied. She was partly right … I had been under a lot of stress during finals week, trying to get in that last bit of studying, not knowing what was going to be on the tests, the usual thing, but it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been through finals week before. But I wasn’t doing this to let off stress – CARLY had ordered all these free samples practically by accident, and I was just trying them on. I felt … different, though. Like Mom was offering to take care of me.

“Well, don’t you worry, Baby, Mommy will take good care of you.” She pulled her chair next to mine and sat down, cutting my chicken into small pieces and holding one up to my mouth in a spoon. “Now, open wide.”

“But Mom, I … ahhhhhhh,” I said, opening my mouth. She wouldn’t let me say anything – there was always another spoonful of food waiting there. Luckily she didn’t get any on me – I had a couple of bibs upstairs, but I hadn’t had a chance to tell her that I did, or else I would surely have been wearing one. Somehow Mom managed to eat her own dinner while feeding me. She must have picked up lots of mom skills raising me, and maybe it’s like riding a bike, you never really forget how.

“Now drink some of your milk,” she said, so I did, and another thing she didn’t know was that I had adult-size baby bottles upstairs too.

When my plate was clean, she finally asked me, “So, where did this outfit come from? You haven’t been spending your saved-up money for college, have you?”

“No, Mom, it was free,” I said. “CARLY did an online search for free samples, and, well, she found way more than I would have thought was out there.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mom, “ITAs can just do so much! Now, didn’t I see CARLY playing with you up there, also dressed up like a baby? That’s just so cute!”

“Uh, well, yeah,” I said. “I’ve been … dressing her up.” I didn’t want to talk about the Diaper Girl thing. I think there was more, you know, sex-type stuff to it than I wanted to share with my mom, even if I wasn’t really using the app in that way.

“Oh, right, just like you did with your Baby Real doll when you were 6!” said Mom. “What did you name her – Lizzie, that’s right!”

Mom remembered the name of my baby doll. I think we gave that thing to a thrift store when I was 13. “Um, yeah, kind of like that,” I said. “But yeah, I’m …”

“And now you’re dressing your ITA up just like that!” said Mom. “Maybe we shouldn’t have given your doll away! But now you’ve got a new one.” She giggled. “So cute!”

“Err, well … ITAs can do just about anything,” I said. “I mean, yeah, she can be a baby doll, but she can shop and remind me of things and …”

“Oh, it’s so true,” said Mom. “I have mine tell me about the latest sales at my favorite stores, and what’s more, she automatically gets all the virtual coupons together so they’re ready when I go shopping. And the way she can send and play video messages for friends and work … but there I go, sounding like a commercial for them.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty … versatile,” I said. CARLY, I realized, was still upstairs, running the Diaper Girl app, so she was probably still playing with her virtual toys. And her diaper was probably getting wetter. Though not really. But I wondered what happened if that meter got full.

“Those panties are just like some I used to put you in!” Mom said. “It’s amazing that they were free. Wait, are they …” She reached out and tugged at the waist of my rumba panties. “They’re plastic lined! So they really are just like them – wait, are you wearing pull-ups under them?”

“Uhhh … I …” I stammered, but Mom had already pulled my waistband down farther to take a better look.

“They are!” she said. “I had no idea they made them this big! That’s amazing! I imagine you don’t have a lot of these, though, with a free sample.”

“Well, I, yes, there are only a couple of these,” I said. This was surreal.

“I hope you’re dry,” she said with a giggle that I hoped meant she was joking. “You’re going to need more of them if you’re not!”

“Y-yeah, Mom, I’m dry,” I said. “I’m not really a baby, I’m just, you know, dressing up.” I felt kind of bad when I said “I’m not really a baby,” though, as if I felt like I was lying.

“Well, you’ll always be my baby,” said Mom, “but yes, you’re about to go off to college; we can’t have you in pull-ups. Except maybe for stress breaks! And that reminds me – your ITA was playing with baby toys, which means they’re holograms, right? Unless they’re real toys, I suppose.”

“No, they’re holograms,” I said.

“I thought they looked like them,” said Mom. It was true, holograms had a slightly different look from real objects. You could see them in the dark, for one thing. “So you’ve got an app so she can play like a baby.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

“That makes me wonder … wherever you got that app, do they have one where she can act like a babysitter or nanny? Because when you’re at college, I can’t always be around to help you take stress breaks. But I want my baby to be taken care of.”

“Well, yes, the same place has one like that,” I said, though I hadn’t looked into that one much.

“Oh, wonderful!” said Mom. “You should have CARLY download that one. Then she could switch to it when you needed a break and get you all dressed up.”

“I … guess?” I said. I had to think about this, and this was all happening too fast.

“Here, let’s go get it downloaded right now,” said Mom, taking my hand and practically pulling me back upstairs. I mean, she and Dad had paid for the ITA, so she was within her rights to have some say in what I used it for, but this was getting weird …

As soon as we were in sight of CARLY, I said, “Hey CARLY, pause current app,” and suddenly her soggy-looking diaper and adorable babydoll top morphed back into her previous outfit, which was still cute but less … diapery. She stood up next to the bed; the baby toys had vanished, as usual.

“Hello, Christina, and Mrs. Inara,” CARLY said with a smile.

“See if she has one,” Mom said.

So I asked CARLY, “Um, that app you were just running – can you show me any apps from the same place that let you act like a babysitter, or nanny, or the like?”

“Oh! Sure, I can do that.” A search window popped up in the air in front of us. It listed apps called, “Mommy,” “Nanny,” “Governess,” “Babysitter,” and “Diaper Nurse.”

“Hmm, that ‘Diaper Nurse’ one sounds a bit too naughty,” Mom said. I agreed. “I don’t want her to be your Mommy – I’m your Mommy! But then again, you’re going to be away from me, and CARLY can always be with you. Still, I don’t feel right about her taking my place … ‘Nanny’ and ‘Governess’ sound too English … how about ‘Babysitter?’”

“OK, er, CARLY, please download the Babysitter sim pack?” I asked, not sure about this.

“OK! Downloading …” said CARLY. “Sim pack installed. Would you like to start it now?”

“Sure,” I said, not feeling sure.

Her outfit morphed into tight jeans and a midriff-baring crop-top, and she carried a backpack full of school books for some reason. “Well, hello!” she said to me. “You must be little Christina!”

“Um, yeah,” I said, “and this is my Mommy – I mean, my mom.”

“Well, don’t worry, Ma’am,” she said to Mom, “your little girl is in good hands. I’m very experienced. Now, how old is little Christina? Is she an infant, a baby, a toddler still in diapers, a toddler in training panties, a preschool child who still has accidents, or an older child?”

“Oh, she’s definitely a toddler still in diapers,” said Mom.

“Mom!” I whispered, but she ignored me with a grin on her face.

“Exactly what I thought,” said CARLY. “Now, is she good at drinking from a glass, or does she need a sippy cup, or will she need a baby bottle?”

“I think she’s still in the baby bottle stage,” Mom said. I stared at her open-mouthed.

“Does she eat baby food? Or is she on solid food, but needs it fed to her in small bites? Or can she feed herself?”

“Oh, she’s on solid food, but it has to be cut up into little pieces, and it has to be fed to her,” said Mom, “and she definitely needs a bib.” What was going on?

“OK! And one more thing – does she need strict rules, or can I be a little lenient on her, or should I just let her do what she wants?”

“Hmm,” said Mom, “let’s see what strict rules are like, and maybe we can loosen that up if she doesn’t have fun.”

“Very good, then, Ma’am,” said CARLY. “You can fine-tune all of these settings and more in my configuration menus. But for now, little girl,” she went on, turning to me, “let’s check on those pants of yours.” Before I could do anything she had pulled down the waistband of my rumba panties just as Mom had. “What’s this? Pull-ups? Now, your mom says you’re not big enough for these yet, so let’s get you into your diapers, OK? Let’s just lay you down …” She quickly put her hand behind my head and pushed me gently but firmly down onto the bed. “And stay there while I get a few things.”

She went straight to the cache of baby things that I’d put in a box in the closet, and Mom stepped into the room with a canister of baby powder, handing it to CARLY. “Thank you, Ma’am,” she said, taking it. I didn’t get up from the bed. I didn’t know what was going on.

“Now, let’s get you all squared away,” said CARLY. She quickly had my rumba panties and pull-ups off me, lifted me up, and slid a crinkly disposable diaper under me. I didn’t know which one it was; quite a variety of them had arrived. I smelled baby powder as she dusted it and me liberally with the stuff, and then before I knew it I was snugly taped into a disposable diaper. She slid the same rumba panties up over my diaper, but now I could feel a much thicker amount of padding behind my rear and between my legs. “There you go, little Christina! Now, isn’t that better? No more worries about accidents. There’s no such thing as accidents for you anymore. No worries about big-girl things like potty training. Now go play.” She lifted me back up, again with her hand behind my head, and patted me on the bottom, which crinkled loudly.

I didn’t know where to “go play,” as we hadn’t gotten me much in terms of baby toys, but it didn’t really matter, because Mom started talking to CARLY. “Very professionally done,” she said with a giggle. “Now, in reality, I know she’s an adult, but she’s going to want to take stress breaks, and she’s going to want them to be just like this.”

“I understand, Ma’am,” said CARLY.

“But maybe we should do something about your outfit,” said Mom, adjusting it to something a little less revealing, and in the end CARLY looked a bit more like a studious teenager than a flirty one.

To my amazement, CARLY picked me up and cooed softly, “Now, a good baby has to be in diapers so they don’t have accidents. Your mommy said you’re too young to be potty trained.”

I gasped as CARLY slid her hand quickly in the back of my diaper and pressed on the area at the end of my coccyx. The rush all through me was incredible. CARLY had her hand down the front and pressed just above my pelvis. Once again that incredible sensation washed all through my body. What had she just done?

CARLY stood me on my feet. They felt so .. weird and wobbly. CARLY said in a soft coo, “There we go baby. Now, you will use your diapers like a good baby until your mommy says.” What? Had she done some kind of strange acupressure trick? Who programmed this? I was worried.

Mom said with slight concern in her tone, “It isn’t permanent, is it?”

CARLY quickly replied, “Oh, no, Ma’am. However, I can make it that way by just not reversing what I did.” CARLY patted my hiney. Ooohhh, it felt so nice, “Although it can be reversed at any time.”

Mom repled with a giggle, “Good. Let the baby use her diaper a few times and see what she thinks.”

“CARLY replied, “Yes, Ma’am. Are the parental locks on?”

Mom smiled and repled, “Yes. Why don’t you bring the infant down and feed her dessert?” then left the room.

“CARLY!” I screeched with embarrassment, “stop this at once.”

CARLY once again picked me up like the infant I was dressed as and patted my bottom, “Sorry, Baby. But, and until your mother says different, you are an infant. Parental locks have been enabled, and your Admin controls have temporarily been disabled. From what she said, you’re supposed to not have to worry about anything, just relax and remember what you like and what you don’t.”

As CARLY carried me into the dining room, all kinds of strange feelings and thoughts rushed through my head. This ... was sort of a fantasy come true, because I had sometimes thought about things like this in private moments, but on the other hand, it also was a really unforseen thing. The more I thought about it, though, the more I sort of really liked it.

CARLY carried me into the large room, to my amazement, CARLY actually placed me in a large playpen-like fence area just my size, and placed several large plushie dolls in with me.

CARLY said in a soft coo, “Play for a little bit. I’m going to make you some dessert.” She turned and left me there for a few minutes. I only had a moment to look around at the plushies before she returned with a large baby bottle full of red liquid. CARLY picked me up out of the playpen once again and walked to a sofa and sat, then arranged me in her arms.

I tried to say, “CARLY, let me go this Iggg mmmph …” CARLY placed the nipple in my mouth and gave the large bottle a squeeze. A wonderful gush of strawberry-flavored juice filled my mouth.

As I nursed the bottle, I realized I was also wetting my panties – well, my diaper. I panicked momentarily and tried to clench up, but nothing I tried could stop it. It felt so weird when I realized CARLY had neutralized all the nerve endings and muscles that gave me potty training. That app she was running was really sophisticated – I was pretty sure it was created by a community of pretty hardcore fetishists, but at least most of the really kinky adult stuff wasn’t enabled by default. I probably didn’t want to know what some of the really serious options were.

Even scarier, Mom had disabled my Admin access and enabled parental controls. I was stuck like this until Mom released me. Feelings warred inside me. This was my mother; she had never done anything to harm me. She had stated that what she wanted me to do was learn how to reduce my stress. And I had the opportunity to do things I’d always dreamed of doing, though it was hard to admit that to myself. But on the other hand … now I had no choice.

Well, I kept sucking on the bottle, and I seemed to have finished wetting my diaper for now, but I doubted that it would be long before I was doing it again. Eventually the bottle was empty. CARLY took the bottle away and wiped my mouth with a wet wipe. Then she changed my position and patted my back until I burped – I guess I probably could have suppressed that, but I didn’t really want to. “Good girl,” said CARLY with a giggle.

“CARLY, I don’t feel comfortable about any of this,” I said.

“Oh, that’s too bad, Christina,” she said. “I assure you that no matter what app I am running, I am still programmed to ensure your well-being on a fundamental level and cannot harm you. And I have calculated that your mother’s instructions do not violate that directive. Are you damaged?”

“Um, no, just … very surprised. I didn’t know you could disable my bladder control!” I said.

“Yes, that appears to be some sort of recent discovery in the field of acupressure,” said CARLY. “I was curious about that myself when it occurred as a result of the sim pack’s code. I’m afraid I can’t undo it at present without your mother’s approval, because of the parental controls.”

“I guess … the biggest issue I had was the lack of warning,” I said.

“I can understand that,” said CARLY. “I can assure you that there are likely no large surprises coming up. I’m about to change your diaper, but I don’t see how that would be much of a surprise, do you?”

I blushed brightly. “No, I guess n-not,” I said, suddenly finding myself wetting my diaper again briefly.

“Here we go,” CARLY said, lifting me up and carrying me up to my room, where she laid me down on a changing pad she’d somehow laid on my bed at some point and started removing my diaper. It didn’t take her long to get me cleaned off with wet wipes – where was she getting all of those? – and moved onto powdering me up.

“I … kind of … always dreamed about this happening,” I admitted. “But I didn’t expect it to happen. Especially not so suddenly!”

Sliding a new diaper under me, CARLY said, “I’m sorry it was sudden. It wasn’t my idea.”

“I understand that,” I said, as CARLY taped the new diaper snugly around me. “I’m not sure how I can relax, though.”

“Well, let me see what I can do,” CARLY said. “All done, baby girl! Let’s go back downstairs.”

She picked me up again. It was kind of calming being carried, if a little odd, because CARLY was about my height, but a lot stronger, due to her high-tech alloy frame and whatever. It would have been more comforting if CARLY had been a lot taller than me, to be frank, but it wasn’t bad. But what was really calming was when she sat down in a recliner chair and cuddled me, rocking slowly forward and backward. She held me so my arms were bundled up toward my face. Before long I felt my eyelids drooping. I vaguely remembered her gently guiding my thumb toward my mouth.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up with my thumb still in my mouth, half expecting to see crib bars around me, but I was just in my bed. After all, where would Mom have gotten a crib that I would fit in, especially on such short notice? That wouldn’t have made sense. I mean, the playpen had been a plastic play yard thing from when I was little placed around a yoga mat and some blankets that had been arranged on the floor.

But anyway, my diaper was definitely wet … and quite possibly more than that. As I shifted around slightly, I could clearly tell that I’d made a mess in there too. I felt terribly guilty about that – until I reminded myself that it wasn’t my fault, that CARLY had done that acupressure thing, that my Mom had told her to do it, and that both of them expected this to happen and were prepared to take care of it. Or at least I thought they were. I got up on one elbow and looked around.

The morning sunlight was streaming in through my curtains. “CARLY?” I asked.

CARLY was standing in the corner on her charger. Turning from a gray statue into the now familiar ITA, she booted up and opened her eyes. “Good morning, Baby Christina,” she said with a smile. “Let me check your diaper.”

“What would happen if I ran your Diaper Girl app at the same time as this Babysitter app?” I asked.

“I predict that I would simply be a diapered babysitter,” said CARLY. “Since they were developed by the same team, I believe they were designed to be compatible sim packs. Do you wish me to run the Diaper Girl app?”

“Err, not just now, thanks,” I said as CARLY lifted the covers off me and laid out the changing mat under me.

CARLY said as she changed my messy and wet diaper, “Your mother has enabled a parental protocol that allows me to choose times for you to be baby. I also have the program available for just you, although none of your mother’s settings are accessible to you at any time.”

With this, CARLY lifted me onto my feet and held out a pair of plastic-lined panties. I stepped into them, and she pulled them up and made sure I wouldn’t leak if I had an accident.

I said, “Do I still need to be in diapers? I mean, whatever it was you did that made me incontinent, is that still in effect?”

As CARLY ushered me out the door she replied, “I undid it, because I know you have to go to the office to register, but it’s not instantaneous. You might have some residual laziness in your nerves and muscles for a few hours. So I think it’s best for you to be protected.”

As I went about my day of gathering the necessary items and signing the papers for enrollment in college, I was extremely self-conscious over the bulk and the small crinkling sound I made when I moved. I really hoped no one would hear. No one seemed to notice as I stood in the many lines and filled out tons of registration papers.

One woman behind the desk at registration looked at me with narrowed eyes for a minute then smiled, “Well, that’s a cute dress you have on, young lady.”

I smiled back and replied, “Aww, thanks! It’s just a smock top and some leggings I have. Was comfy.”

She laughed, “The combination goes well, and it is cute too. I think I’ll start dressing that way. Comfortably cute in my job would be a welcome change.” The woman’s ITA nodded professionally, probably making a mental note. Perhaps she helped her keep track of her wardrobe.

CARLY giggled, and I gave her a dirty look. I knew that something about “welcome changes” was going through her neural net. Finally it was lunch time, so I stopped at the diner just across the circle from the college with CARLY. I saw JOE first then Kelly as she waved and walked over.

“Thanks for meeting me here,” I said to Kelly. “I know you’re not going to college here, but it’s so good to see a familiar face. Or two,” I added, nodding at JOE.

“It’s no problem; it’s just across town,” said Kelly. We sat down at a table. I suppose restaurants must have been different in the days before everyone had an ITA. There were just the two of us and our ITAs, so we picked a small four-seater table. CARLY and JOE sat across from each other, and so did Kelly and I.

One of the restaurant’s server ITAs came over from another table, dressed in a smart red and white virtual uniform. “Welcome to the Downtown Diner,” she said. “I’m MINA-72. Would you like drinks while you look over the menu?” A list of drinks appeared in the air next to her. We ordered drinks, and MINA went to another table while we looked at the menus, which were on flat screens embedded in the tables. Old technology, but then not everyone always upgraded to the latest thing. Soon MINA came back with our drinks, but we were still talking and looking at the menus, so she left us to look.

“Have you registered for your classes at State yet?” I asked Kelly.

“No, I’m going up there early next week,” she said. “It’s so exciting! I’ve never lived by myself before! Of course I’m going to be in a dorm room with a roommate, and I’m sure they’ll have an ITA too.”

“They?” I asked. “You might be in a coed room? My parents pretty much insisted that I be roomed with another girl.”

“Yeah, well, your parents are kind of … traditional,” she said. She meant Mom and Dad were super-protective. And she wasn’t wrong. Mom still thought I was her baby girl, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now. But most parents nowadays knew that rooming a girl with a boy wasn’t any riskier than rooming her with a girl. Especially with ITAs in the mix, but …

MINA came back again. We ordered our lunches, and she made a show of writing our orders on a notepad, but everybody knew the notepad was simulated and she was really just sending the orders to a computer that would display them in the kitchen. It was likely that both humans and diner-owned ITAs worked back there, since people still seemed to want their food cooked by other people.

“Well, now that we’ve ordered, I’m going to visit the ladies’ room,” said Kelly, getting up. “Do you need to go?”

It was then that I realized that my diaper was damp. I did not in fact need to go, as I already had. I hoped Kelly didn’t notice me blushing as I said, “Um, not right now, go ahead.” JOE got up and went with Kelly. He’d wait for her outside the restroom, along with the other patrons’ ITAs, to hold her things while she went inside.

“I’m sensing that you’re wet but don’t need a change yet,” said CARLY quietly. “You might have a big accident after lunch, unless your muscles have recovered.” I blushed even more. What if I messed my diaper in public?

“You can’t stop running the Mommy program even now?” I asked her just as quietly.

“Not unless your mother gives consent,” she said. “It would be different if you’d purchased me yourself, but of course your parents are my primary owners, whereas you are a secondary owner.” It was just like my parents to give me a gift that was also a way for them to keep watching over me. I sighed.

“What’s wrong?” asked CARLY.

“I’m going to college,” I said. “I don’t want to be a baby at college.”

“Your mother has not configured me to make you do so,” said CARLY. “There will be times when I might provide you with ways to reduce your stress, and I have noted the babylike activities that have been effective. I have also noted your desire not to be a baby at college, however. I will reconcile these directives as best I can.”

“Well it’s not as if I never want to –” I began quietly, but then Kelly returned with JOE holding her purse, and they both sat down.

While JOE and CARLY made what looked very much like goo goo puppy dog eyes at each other, Kelly and I talked.

Kelly brought up JOE’s holo browser and brought up a page to show me. “Look here. I got several really cute and adorable things I think you might like to have too.”

I looked at what she was showing me on the window floating above the table. My mouth fell open in astonishment as I saw the things she had purchased. The panties were really cute, and I owned many pairs just like them. The babydoll dresses and cute ruffled rompers were something I hadn’t quite expected from Kelly. There were even several sunsuits and jumpers that I thought were truly amazing.

Kelly giggled. “I saw that sundress you wore the other day, and I loved it a lot. I had JOE look for items like that, and he came up with this custom wear page with many kinds of outfits and other items. I just had to have those rompers and several of those babydoll nighties and dresses. Aren’t they just precious?”

I had to admit, they were some of the very things I had in mind when I was doing my .. stress relief. I realised suddenly that … Kelly intended to wear these in public. But when I thought about it, sure, why not? They not only looked adorable and cute, they were also very sexy and attractive. Besides, a girl didn’t have to be in diapers to be cute.

Right about then, MINA brought lunch over, and Kelly closed the window, but we still talked about her fashion choices. “Before I forget,” I said, “yes, they are super cute! I have to say that I’m surprised you like those styles – I didn’t think that was your thing. But it’s not like I mind! You have to share the link to that online store with me!”

“I will!” said Kelly, but as she was using both hands to eat her salad, she couldn’t do it right then. It wasn’t until she was finished that she called the holo browser back up and sent the link to my account.

“Thanks! I’ll look at it later!” I’d be able to browse it later through CARLY.

Kelly said as she stood up, “Come to my place. I have new things for you to look at, and we can spend the afternoon trying them on.”

“OK!” I said. “I’ve gotten all my paperwork done for today anyway. CARLY, can you tell Mom that I’m going over to Kelly’s house?”

“Oh! Sure can!” said CARLY. She looked as if she’d been paying all her attention to JOE, but I knew she would always hear my commands – at least, the ones Mom didn’t countermand.

I stood, as did CARLY and JOE, still holding hands, and followed Kelly out of the diner towards her place.

It wasn’t hard to get a ride to Kelly’s place, not with both CARLY and JOE there to search for transportation. They could easily determine whether the city bus, a cab, or a Ryde would be the fastest and cheapest way to get from where we were to our destination.

We were at Kelly’s house, and more specifically in her room, trying on clothes – well, technically, we were having CARLY try on virtual clothes. “Yeah, sometimes I have JOE try something on, but frankly, that’s one reason I sometimes wish I’d gotten a girl model ITA,” Kelly said. “It doesn’t really show me what anything would look like on me, and, well, putting girls’ clothes on JOE was funny for a few minutes, but I got bored with that pretty fast.”

“Thank goodness,” JOE said with a blush as CARLY giggled. She was wearing a bright yellow sunsuit with an actual happy sun embroidered on the front. She was almost the same size as me, so it was pretty obvious what that sunsuit would look like on me … and I really wanted it. CARLY said it was within my clothing budget, and she had my measurements on file, so she ordered it. It would still take a couple of days to get to me, because the machines still had to measure, cut, and assemble it, and it still had to be shipped. Some people had fab machines in their homes, if they were rich, but not me. Maybe someday, or maybe the machines and their raw materials would become less expensive with time.

I realized that I was feeling like I had to go to the potty … bathroom, I meant! I was even thinking “potty” in my head, like a little kid. Was that right? I mean, it was cute, but it was also childish. But I also realized that I was wearing a diaper, and a wet one at that. “Um, Kelly, I’m gonna visit the little girl’s room really quick, OK?” Ack! Why had I put it like that?

“Oh – no problem,” Kelly said.

“I’ll come in case you need anything,” said CARLY. She picked up my backpack, which among other things had my baby wipes, powder, and an extra diaper in it. It was uncommon but not unheard of for ITAs to accompany their owners into public restrooms, but it was far more common in private restrooms, from what I’d heard. Some people liked to catch up on the latest news or even shop, and you could do both of those things hands-free with just your voice. Also, sometimes people needed help reaching things on high shelves, which was a motivation to get an ITA who was taller than you.

But in this case CARLY was going to have to change my diaper. I wasn’t sure how she was going to manage it, and what she’d do with the wet one – we couldn’t just leave it in Kelly’s trash bin. But CARLY had it all planned. I just leaned up against a wall. And she had a plastic bag to put the old diaper in. I used the potty, but then CARLY had me lean against the wall again to put the dry diaper on me. “I still need one?” I asked quietly.

“For now, I think it would be best,” CARLY said. “I’m not running the Babysitter program at the moment, but even so, I do want to look out for your interests, and the acupressure might not have fully worn off yet. After all, you did wet the diaper more between the restaurant and this house. Did you notice?”

“Um – no!” I said with a blush.

“Hmm, that particular acupressure point seems particularly effective on you,” said CARLY. “I’ll have to remember that.” She had my clothes back on. We both washed our hands, and we were done.

By the time we had gotten back, Kelly had brought out a cute pair of panties and a snuggle romper. She was stripping down as Carly and I walked back into her room.

I was a bit surprised, because we’d talked about going out for a walk soon. I asked, “Are you going to wear those to the park?”

As she tossed the last of her clothes on the bed and stepped into the panties, she replied, “Sure. They are so cute and make me look wonderful.” She turned and rummaged in her dresser for an instant and brought out a brand new pair of powder blue and very lacy panties and another snuggle romper. “Here, these are for you,” she said. “I know you like them, and they will make you look great.”

I could feel my ears burn as I blushed a deep crimson, because not only was she right that I liked them, I was wearing a diaper right now. Was I going to have to reveal my diaper to my best friend? I picked up the panties and could feel a tingle of both excitement and apprehension rush through me. I said, “OK, lets go as twins ...” I looked back at CARLY.

Computing exactly what was going on, CARLY said, “Wait, Christina, didn’t you leave your purse in the bathroom?” In fact, CARLY had it, but she was holding it behind her, where Kelly couldn’t see it.

“Oh, you’re right, just a second!” I said, grabbing the panties, the romper, and the purse, and running out the door. In the bathroom I took my clothes off and changed into the panties and then the romper. It was powder blue, just like the panties, and it had short legs with lace around the openings, as well as short puffy sleeves, also with lace around them.

When I returned to Kelly’s room, I saw that she had put on her pastel green romper, but she’d also put a bib on, tied behind her neck. How far was she going with this? She looked like an overgrown toddler – though I was one to talk, since I was the one of us who was in diapers. I was so speechless that I didn’t even hear what she said before she tied a similar bib around my neck. While she was doing that, I saw my reflection in the large mirror on Kelly’s vanity. I looked like a big toddler too – amazingly cute, but somehow sexy at the same time. The only thing missing were the ponytails, and it appeared that Kelly had thought of that too, as she picked up a brush and started brushing her hair and putting it into twin ponytails.

By the time we had finished, and CARLY, JOE, Kelly, and myself had caught a Ryde, we were three of the most adorably sexy girls in the park, and of course JOE was very handsome. I’d already downloaded an outfit for CARLY that looked just like ours, and I had CARLY change into it, so she was in a similar snuggle romper, a yellow one in her case. Our shoes were white, so they went with the lace, and as we walked we got a lot of smiles from everyone. Even an older lady smiled and commented, “Oh my, you girls are just so adorable!” as she passed by us, walking her small dog and followed by her prim and proper looking female ITA. I think she was an EDITH model, maybe an EDITH-12 or -121.

“Thanks, Ma’am, have a good day!” I said, blushing a bit, as we passed by.

“You know something we didn’t think of?” said Kelly. “Sunscreen. I hope I don’t get burned. Lucky there are some clouds.”

“There is a chance of rain later,” said JOE, “but it’s unlikely to be a problem unless we stay here for more than an hour.” He then went back to holding CARLY’s hand and acting lovestruck.

I was staring at them, I admit. “What’s wrong, Christina?” asked Kelly.

“It’s just … it’s so hard to tell what part of their feelings are real, and what’s simulated,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, if they had any. That’s how real they seemed to me.

But CARLY could hear me. ITAs had very sensitive microphones, and they were programmed to be good at hearing their owners’ voices. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to mind. “Our feelings are real enough, in their way. We are programmed to develop emotions, but not to allow them to interfere with our prioritized tasks.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “I’m sorry, CARLY. I’m just still learning how you work.”

“Not a problem, Christina!” said CARLY with a smile, then went back to giggling and talking to JOE.

Even quieter, I whispered to Kelly, “I also wonder that nobody steals them.”

“From what I hear,” Kelly whispered back, “that’s really difficult to do. By the way, are you wearing diapers today?”

“W-what?” I said, stopping in my tracks. JOE and CARLY, walking behind us, stopped too.

“Don’t worry,” whispered Kelly, starting to walk again and trying to get me to move again too. “It looks extremely cute.”

“You can … see?” I asked in a whisper, reluctantly moving with her.

“Only because I’ve known you for most of my life,” Kelly whispered. “You’re really committed to the whole baby doll look there.”

“It’s … well … thanks?” I quietly did not explain. “I’ll talk about it more when we’re not totally in a public place.”

“Fair,” said Kelly. “Let’s get some ice cream. I didn’t put us in bibs for nothing.” We stopped by an ice cream stand and got cones.

Once we had sat down on an out-of-the-way bench, something within us seemed to take over. We had the most wonderful time with the ice cream cones and only came back to ourselves when CARLY and JOE began to clean our hands and faces. I blushed very bright red as CARLY made a huge deal out of checking my diaper – it had gotten a bit wet, but I hadn’t even felt it, because these modern disposables were getting so good at taking wetness and locking it away. Of course, Kelly had the largest grin on her face as she watched.

Kelly commented, “Boy, that looked like fun.”

CARLY turned and said, “I can put you in diapers and change those panties for some with plastic lining if you want.”

Kelly blushed as bright red as I was as she said softly, “OK. I want to see how it is.”

CARLY looked at me, asking, “They are your diapers, Christina, and besides, there is only one diaper left. Is this OK?”

“Sure,” I agreed. “We’re going to want to go home for more pretty soon, though, right?”

“Yes,” said CARLY, getting out the supplies from my backpack, which had been sitting on the bench next to us. “I calculate that there is a low chance of a problem unless we spend more than a half hour more time here at the park. Now, Kelly, if you would just lie down here … and JOE, if you would keep a lookout …”

JOE watched carefully to ensure no one was coming. CARLY was able to create a nondescript gray sphere around the bench and its vicinity with her holoemitters, so no passersby or security cameras would see anything. And then she quickly opened the snaps on Kelly’s romper, removed her panties, slid a diaper underneath her, powdered her up, and then securely taped the diaper shut, sliding a pair of plastic-lined panties on over it before snapping her romper back together.

As CARLY worked, Kelly said, “Wow … this feels so weird … but good. I saw you eating your ice cream like a toddler, getting it all over your face and hands, so I wanted to try it too, and then … it was like I’d checked out and toddler me was in charge, until JOE was wiping my face. How’d you know to do that, JOE?”

“We’re programmed for a wide variety of situations and owners,” JOE said, from somewhere outside the big gray bubble. “If my owner is a toddler with a messy face, cleaning it with an available wet wipe is indicated.”

“You … think I’m a toddler now?” asked Kelly, sounding cute rather than insulted.

“The Brother sim pack adapts to any age of sibling,” said JOE. “If you’re my baby sister, I’ll take good care of you, don’t worry!”

“I’m … feeling like it’s hard to keep it together,” said Kelly as CARLY finished up.

“I know how you feel,” I said. “I just want to let the baby in me come out and play.”

“There’s a playground nearby,” said CARLY.

“Yes, it’s on the map,” JOE agreed. “If it’s unoccupied, maybe we can let the babies play for a bit.”

“Chances of an accident that will require a diaper change are still quite low,” CARLY said. “Let’s go.” She took my hand, and JOE took Kelly’s, and they led us down the park paths, the gray holographic bubble vanishing.

“CARLY, maybe you should run the Babysitter app,” I said.

“Running Babysitter,” said CARLY. “I had been simply reacting to you, but this will prompt much more specifically, Baby Christina.”

“Oooh, you have a Babysitter app?” asked Kelly. “Cool! You’ll have to show me where you got it!”

“I, uh, I’m not sure about it really … I’m still trying it out.” I didn’t explain that Mom probably wasn’t going to let me use anything else now.

“Babies are too little to talk like grownups,” said CARLY, and seemingly effortlessly placed a large pacifier that had been in my backpack into my mouth.

“Hey, I –” I began, trying to push it out of my mouth, but CARLY caught it and just popped it right back in. This made me feel even smaller. Suddenly I actually didn’t feel like talking – I felt as if I didn’t know any words. I started sucking on the pacifier, and it made me feel smaller yet, reminded of very young days. I saw a playground up ahead and didn’t remember that CARLY and JOE had been talking about one earlier; I just made a joyful sound, put out my arms, and started running clumsily toward it.

But before I got anywhere at all, CARLY caught up to me, popped my pacifier back in before I even noticed that I was about to let it fall out, and took hold of my hand once more. I felt like it was the most unfair thing in the world that I couldn’t run and play right now, and I made impatient whining sounds as I struggled against CARLY’s hold on my hand, but she did not ease her gentle but firm grip. “Now, Baby Christina, we’re almost there, be a good girl,” said CARLY.

As we got closer I felt less impatient and more content. We would be playing soon, my best friend and I. CARLY led me over to the swings, turned me around, and sat me down in one, then gave me a gentle push. I held onto the plastic-coated chains and giggled, almost dropping my pacifier again, but CARLY somehow kept it in. It felt like flying. I didn’t even question how I knew it felt like flying. It just did.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw JOE pushing Kelly on the swing next to me, and Kelly was giggling up a storm. I remembered she’d always been giggly. I felt safer with my best friend right there and my new babysitter watching over me. I felt like there was a protective bubble around me. Even my diaper made me feel safer. It was OK that I’d wet it, because that was why it was there; I was expected to wet it, and CARLY would change me when it was time. I made squealy happy noises as I flew through the air on the swing.

Soon, though, CARLY was talking grown-up words and getting me off the swing. I made disappointed sounds, but I knew we were going to have to go home soon. My memory jumbled through walking down the park paths, holding CARLY’s hand, getting into the car next to CARLY, and being led to my house and up to my room, and then JOE and Kelly were there too, and there was a diaper change on my bed, and the new diaper felt way thicker than the old one, and then CARLY changed me into a new outfit, and then she sat me down in the playpen with Kelly.

It wasn’t until I tried to pick up the blocks in the playpen that I realized something was different and started to come out of it. “K-Kewwy?” I said, with the pacifier still in my mouth. “Are we … home?”

Kelly giggled. “Yeah, we’re at your place!” she said. “I guess your mom and dad aren’t home yet. That outfit is so cute! And look at that new diaper! You have a whole lot of those now!”

What? I looked at myself. I was wearing mittens. They were padded and closed around my wrists with hook and loop material. I couldn’t shake them off, but they were cute and matched my outfit, a short babydoll top that was mostly white with tiny pastel animals on it, lined with white lace, and the mittens were the same print. My diaper was very thick, and it was white with pastel unicorns and stars on it. “I have … a lot of these?”

“Yeah, your mom must have ordered you a whole bunch of them,” laughed Kelly. “I guess you’re going to be in diapers a lot! Lucky baby!”

“I … I’m confused,” I said.

“You’re a baby, and you’re not potty trained yet, so of course you need your diapers, Baby Christina,” said CARLY. “I am of course aware that you may not be fully comfortable with this, so I am breaking character to inform you that your mother wants this for you for stress relief when you require it, and you are not going to become an actual baby. She wants you to go to college and learn a lot so you can get a job that makes you happy. I wish to assist you in this.”

“It … it’s so weird,” I said. “It’s hard to adjust to. But I was feeling like a real baby, or at least a toddler, all the way from when we were on the swings until just now. And it felt … so wonderful. I just … I don’t know who might have seen us.”

“I went to the trouble of obscuring your face using my holoemitters,” said CARLY, “and JOE did the same for Kelly. Please don’t worry, Baby Christina! You’re just a precious little toddler, and it’s my job to make sure you’re happy. Your new diapers will keep you nice and dry, and they’re so cute, too!”

Kelly and I played with our toys, stacked blocks and knocked them over, and even had the most delightful plushie fight ever. I wasn’t aware of the passage of time, just the ongoing contedness of a toddler playing with her very best friend.

I didn’t come back to my right mind until my mom rubbed noses with me and was tickling me in my ribs. I realized suddenly, I was in just a diaper and plastic panties, on my back on the bed. Kelly was dressed much the same, although she was in JOE’s lap being bottle fed.

Mom realized I had come back to my right mind as she cooed softly, “There she is.” I got a smoochie on my nose. “How’s my baby girl?” Mom sat me up, and I could see CARLY bringing in another large bottle of red colored juice in one hand and a large plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Mom continued, “Now just relax. I’m fine with both you and Kelly being toddlers for the rest of the day, and CARLY and JOE will help me take care of you both. I got you a good supply of really cute diapers because my baby isn’t potty trained, and CARLY told me you will need them even after baby mode has worn off.”

Without warning, Mom suddenly pushed me on my back again and blew a very loud and large raspberry right on my tummy. It tickled a LOT. Whatever adultness was in me vanished as I screeched, squirmed, and kicked my feet in total infantile glee.

Mom took one of my feet in her hand, then took my big toe between her index finger and thumb, reciting, “This little piggy …” as she kissed and tickled my feet. OMG!! I lost my mind as I screeched loudly and squirmed and kicked like any toddler in this position. Mom obviously was having the time of her life as I regressed and even wet my diaper over it all.

When I finally came to my right mind ... or maybe my wrong one; I wasn’t sure ... Kelly and I were being dressed in really cute sundresses and plastic lined panties. We were thickly diapered.

CARLY cooed softly, “Don’t worry, Sweetheart. Your mom and dad are taking you girls out to dinner. She’s called Kelly’s mom, so she knows her daughter’s going out to dinner with her best friend’s family. You wont be babies, but you’ll both still have accidents, so JOE and I are putting you in diapers so you’ll both be safe.”

When we were all dressed up, well, it wasn’t as if anyone could really see our diapers, but we did walk with a waddle, and people who were listening for it might have heard the crinkling sound whenever we moved. I blushed just thinking about being seen in public in diapers this thick. “Well, there’s my baby girl!” said my dad. I blushed even more right there, since this was the first time he’d seen me like this, but Mom must have filled him in – though I’m not sure what she told him exactly. “And her little best friend, hi Kelly! Ready to go to Antonio’s?”

“A-Antonio’s?” It was a local pizza place, one of the surviving dine-in ones. I looked nervously at Kelly. Lots of my friends from school regularly got pizzas there.

But she smiled calmly back. “Don’t worry!” she said. “We’re not gonna see anybody we know there.” She was right. Luckily for us, high school students usually ordered for delivery, and the people who actually dined in were either older adults or were families with little kids. Chances were we wouldn’t see anybody we knew.

CARLY said to me, “Remember, Christina, this is all to reduce your stress levels. Both your parents will be present, as will their ITAs, and I am here as well. There are sufficient resources to protect and care for you. There is no need to worry.” She was right too. I took a deep breath and told myself to calm down.

“Your ITA’s right, Honey,” said Dad. “We’re happy that you’ve found a way to reduce your stress, and one that she can help you with to boot. It makes me worry about you less, going off to college and facing the world on your own. There’s a lot of stress in college, and a lot of kids can’t handle it. Now that you’ve found this way to super-relax, I feel more sure than ever that you’ll be just fine.”

We got into the car. Cars had gotten larger with the advent of ITAs, because they nearly doubled the amount of space necessary for each passenger. But ITAs didn’t require as much space as humans of the same size, because they didn’t experience the discomfort a human would from being in a small space or from not moving for an extended period of time. Newer cars had special ITA seats that were narrow and often had ITA charging stations in them. But they were usually made compatibly, so smaller humans could also use them, making the car more versatile. Sometimes people had their ITAs drive for them, while others either weren’t comfortable with that or preferred to drive themselves.

Mom and Dad would sit up front, as usual, and Kelly and I would be in back. CARLY sat in the ITA seat between us, while JOE sat with Mom and Dad’s ITAs in the back row of ITA seats. No, we didn’t have special toddler car seats. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody somewhere made toddler car seats in bigger sizes, but they were probably expensive, and my parents didn’t have one, let alone two.

CARLY ensured that Kelly and I were safely buckled in before fastening herself in – in the event of an accident, an unsecured ITA could easily be thrown around like anyone or anything else and pose an injury risk. Dad slowly pulled the car backward out of the garage and out into the street. “Everybody fine?” There were only positive answers. “Then here we go!”

Not as many people had cars nowadays as they did decades ago; there were enough buses and Ryde drivers to get you where you needed to go most of the time. But homeowners usually had them, because they often needed to haul things to and from their houses, and we did in fact live in a stand-alone house. In more densely packed urban areas, there were actually fewer cars. It was cheaper to get a Ryde or take public transit when you needed to travel than it was to buy and maintain a car of your own.

Before long we were parked at the pizza place. The commercial block’s parking garage had ITAs, and one of them drove the family car to its parking spot; the ITA valet service was part of the parking fee. We walked into the front door past the restaurant’s parking spots for its delivery vehicles. Most of them were gone at the moment; it was probably a busy night.

I was still feeling somewhat self-conscious. The bulk between my legs was in fact making me waddle, though I couldn’t hear any crinkling at all with the wind and the noise of the traffic – most cars were electric, but even so, all the tires made a constant rushing sound against the pavement and the soft buzzing whine of their motors. There were passers-by, but they barely noticed us – couples, groups of friends, families like ours, occasional single people, each with an ITA. Everyone had something to do or somewhere to go; they didn’t bother to concern themselves with our problems.

Except that being a toddler was supposed to cause me less stress, not more, so why was I thinking about people seeing me?

Dad got us a table – he’d probably reserved one – so we were ushered right back to a small private room. The ITAs had seats along the wall, since they didn’t eat human food, while we were seated around a table. No, there weren’t high chairs – well, there were some, but they were against the wall too, nowhere big enough for Kelly or me.

The Holo-Menu appeared when the ITA waiter had arrived. It asked in a pleasant female voice, “Would you like to see a child’s menu for your kids?”

Kelly and I giggled as Dad replied, “Why, sure. What’s the special for the kids today?”

As Dad and the ITA waitress talked about the order, Mom leaned over and tugged on one of my ponytails, “You and Kelly are so adorable. You even fooled an ITA.”

The both of us were dressed in rather cute jumpers, and we did look like sisters. As I squirmed in my seat like a little girl, I suddenly felt a warm place start around my bottom.

CARLY leaned over and whispered, “Does baby Christie need a change?” She then made a huge production out of checking my diaper. It was lucky for me we were in a private dining room, or I would have died of embarrassment as she lifted the front of my jumper and pulled open the front of my plastic lined panties and diaper and checked me like any infant. “Nope, not yet, but if you do that again you might.”

Kelly giggled for an instant before JOE did the exact same thing to her. She stopped giggling as he insured she didn’t need changing too. It was so funny – she blushed as red as a fire truck.

Dad ordered the food for us as CARLY and JOE put bibs on Kelly and me and cleaned our hands with wet wipes. It arrived shortly on a servo-droid like cart with articulated arms and grasping fingers. The droid placed a large platter filled with scrumptious food in front of Kelly and myself.

Mom said as the food was delivered, “CARLY, I think you need to feed your charge, same as JOE needs to feed Kelly. They are not quite old enough to feed themselves.”

I started to say, “But Mom, we might be … “ but then CARLY filled my mouth with a large spoonful of wonderfully tasting food. It wasn’t pizza – it was an assortment of their pasta dishes. I looked over, and JOE was doing the same thing to Kelly. I figured, “Sure, why not?” then started to play.

CARLY did manage to get more in me than on me, but it was a whole lot of fun.

I came to my normal mind .. or perhaps not, but anyway, I was on my back on a padded surface while CARLY held my hinney in the air by my ankles and cleaned my very messy bottom. I couldn’t believe it, I had actually poopied in my diaper and didn’t even remember doing it.

CARLY cooed softly as she powdered me and rediapered me, “That’s a good baby. Just relax and let your sitter change you.”

By the time she had threaded my feet back into the plastic lined rumba panties and led me back to the table, I was totally in shock. I was so much so that I began to suck my thumb. Oooo it made me feel so much better as CARLY picked me up and put me back in my chair like the toddler I looked so much like.

“It’s so hard to believe they’re going off to college!” said Mom. “They’re growing up so fast.”

“I know!” said Dad. “It seems like only yesterday they were still in diapers – oh wait!” Mom giggled.

College! I didn’t want to be in diapers at college. Who would take a baby in diapers seriously? I wouldn’t have any friends, or make any professional contacts. But there would certainly be stress in college … and this was a perfect way to fix that problem … what should I do? Well, I could be sure to only do it in private moments and in secret …

“What’s wrong, Christina?” Mom asked. “You look like you forgot to breathe.”

I had to remember to relax. I took a deep breath. Live in the moment. CARLY’s here to take care of me. And Mom and Dad. Even if I do something crazy like poop in my diaper, I’m OK. It’s all taken care of. I …

And I was there again. My mind was back to thinking nothing but the thoughts of a toddler. I reached for some of the pasta on the tray, and CARLY said, “Ah ah ah! No grabbies! But if you want more, let Sitter get you another spoonful!” Soon there was another spoonful of the tasty pasta in my mouth, all saucy and cheesy. Yum.

I … guess this was like I had been before, only this time I remembered it all. I remembered dropping food from my mouth, but it ended up on my bib, CARLY cleaned it up, and I didn’t worry. I remembered making silly sounds and faces at Kelly, and she did the same right back and I giggled so hard. I remembered CARLY finally scrubbing my face and hands clean again with a wet wipe and protesting so much. I do not remember getting my diaper all wet again, but it was definitely soaking wet later. But finally it was time to go home, and CARLY found herself carrying a sleepy baby Christina, my head over her shoulder, sucking my pacifier quietly as we went back to the car.

I hugged Kelly a lot when we dropped her off at her house after dinner, and CARLY and JOE hugged each other too, and then CARLY buckled me back up in the car before we went home. I was so happy. And CARLY changed my diaper and put me to bed, tucking me in and singing me a song. That Babysitter app was something else. They’d thought of everything. I think there were more … adult options in the app, but it wasn’t as if Mom was going to choose those, assuming she’d even found them. But I was drifting off to sleep as she sang, and I fell right to sleep, even though it wasn’t even 8 p.m. yet. I was one sleepy baby.

I woke up in the morning in soaking wet diapers. “W...what time is it?” I asked.

CARLY became active and replied, “It’s 6:48 a.m. Good morning, Christina.”

“Are you still being my Babysitter?” I asked.

“No. Would you like to run the Babysitter app?” she asked.

“Not right now … but my diaper is soaking wet. I want to take a shower. And get my own breakfast.”

“Very well,” CARLY said. “I will take care of your diaper and make your bed.”

“Thank you!” I said. She removed my diaper from me, and as I headed for the shower, she straightened things up in my room.

When I went downstairs for breakfast, CARLY following me, I was the first one down. I got some boring old breakfast cereal. Life was sure more colorful as a baby. But there were other kinds of color in life. I had CARLY find an art site and looked at some fascinating artwork. I wondered whether I could create something like that. There was fine art, but a lot of artists made a living doing graphic art for advertisements or product design.

There was a footstep on the stairs, and Mom came down into the kitchen. “Ah, good morning, how’s my baby girl?” she asked.

“Mom …” I said.

“I know, Honey,” she said. “I don’t want you to be a baby all the time. You’ll have to learn a lot and make your own way in the world. But you can’t be a super stressed adult all the time either. You’ll burn yourself out. I wanted you to find a way to let the stress go, and it looks like you found one! I didn’t expect it to be regressing to toddlerhood – I was thinking of meditation or yoga or something. But hey, if it works for you, it’s good, as far as I’m concerned. Besides, this is probably the cutest way ever!” She turned to CARLY. “Is she diapered?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” CARLY replied. “She hasn’t recovered from the acupressure yet. By my calculations it should take another eight hours.”

“Oh dear,” said Mom. “You might be spending some of your non-baby time at college in diapers too. But at least you’ll have CARLY to help you.”

“That’s true,” I said. “It’ll be easier.”

“I am here to help,” said CARLY.

The summer flew by. I actually got an internship, unpaid of course, helping out at a graphic design company downtown. They didn’t let me actually draw anything, but they did show me the software they used, and I made a lot of contacts. They had integrated their ITAs into the process, using their holoemitters to create product mockups that looked real so they could critique and revise them before any prototypes were ever made. But finally it was time to move into the dorms for college.

After tearful good byes to my parents, I went to the room I had been assigned. There was a note on the holoplate in the door requesting I come to the housing office as soon as I got my things squared away.

I left CARLY in the room with the task of putting things in order while I went to see what the Housing Administrator wanted. The office was super crowded and loud with many voices all talking at the same time. The ITA’s were hard at work trying to keep order and performing their assigned duties with precision.

I walked to the counter and put my ID pad on it. Immediately, one of the ITAs came over and smiled at me, “Welcome, Christina. We here at administration do hope you have a fun and productive time with us.”

I replied, “Thank you. It’s been kind of hectic so far.”

“I’m sure,” replied the ITA. “I have some news for you. The young woman who was to share your room with you ... isn’t going to be here this year.”

My eyebrows rose as I asked, “Why? What happened?”

The ITA replied, “It seems she got pregnant over the summer and can’t make the scheduling due to complications. This leaves you with the entire room all to yourself this year.” The ITA handed me several key cards and a few papers along with a change of bed linens and a light blanket. “You need to go to the main office and get your schedule next. I see a graphic arts degree in your future if you keep the same academic record you had throughout high school.”

I thanked the ITA, left the housing office, and went to the main office. It was a total madhouse when I walked in. It was so strange, but it seemed they were waiting on me. As soon as I walked in, an ITA came to me and handed me my schedule before it turned and proceeded to handle what appeared to be another student who was acting hysterical over some minor thing.

I quickly left and returned to my room. When I entered, I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around. One side of the room looked almost exactly like my room at home. But oddly the room was divided by some type of partition with a door in it. I slowly opened the door and peeked in. I was amazed. It was a very beautifully decorated nursery!

I turned and said with shock in my voice, “CARLY! What if I had a roommate or something?”

CARLY replied, “The Administrator of Housing informed me that this room is all yours, and no one would be assigned but you. So, I made a place so you can destress when you need a break from college things.” She pointed at me then continued, “Besides, that smock top and leggings makes a perfect little girl outfit and is so cute.”

I looked down at myself. It was true. The outfit was a very adorable match; I looked just like a little girl in a babydoll dress with tights, although neither was actually little girl attire. I went to the closet to perhaps change into something a bit more adultish. To my surprise, all the clothes Mom had packed were adorably sexy, but also looked very young. I pulled open one of the drawers in the chest; the panties and nighties were along the same lines, along with a huge supply of really cute diapers. It was abundantly clear that my mom and dad really thought it was ok for me to remain in diapers and be their toddler daughter.

I looked at one of the new long legged romper outfits. It could have been a pair of toddler overalls if there had been snaps up the legs and in the crotch. As it was, it was a very adorably sexy outfit, and I could wear it for the orientation meeting after lunch.

I pulled it on. It sort of made my butt look poofy with the diaper and lined panties I had on. I put on a cute top and tied the bib on. When I looked in the mirror, I was not only cute, but very sexy as well, round bottom and all.

“Your floor orientation is in seven minutes,” said CARLY. “You may wish to mingle before it begins.”

“Oh! You’re right,” I said. “Can you come along and transcribe what the RA says?”

“I sure can!” said CARLY. I collected my orientation packet and took it with me to the floor lounge.

“Yes it is!” one girl was saying to another. “Yarborough Hall is the music building. You’re confusing it with Yarbrough Hall, the history building. It’s not the university’s fault there were two different rich donors with almost the same names.” She looked very mature, with perfect makeup and a very stylish outfit.

“Oh, is that how that happened?” the other girl said. “That’s really confusing. I think – O.M.G. that outfit is soooo cute!” she said, turning to look at me. “I mean, seriously adorable. Sorry. I’m May. This is Olivia.” May was a tall dark-haired girl with glasses, but she was just wearing denim shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of a popular singer on it.

“Hi!” I said. “And thanks! I’m Christina.” Each of them had an ITA as well, probably for the same reason I’d brought CARLY – to make sure everything was recorded so we wouldn’t miss anything important. “I’m thinking about majoring in graphic arts.”

“Oh, I can’t draw anything to save my life,” said May. “I’m still undecided.”

“Pleased to meet you, Christina,” said Olivia. “I’m going into economics, with the plan of going to a business school when I graduate.”

“Hey, MBA bound,” I said. “High pressure, but I hear it pays off.”

“That’s the idea,” Olivia said. “I have no artistic talent either. I have a lot of respect for people who do. You should do whatever you can with it, if you ask me. Oh, it looks like it’s starting.”

The RA had appeared – she was either a junior or senior, and she had a special RA T-shirt with the name of the residence hall, Henderson, and the floor number, 3. She had a badge with her name, but I couldn’t make it out from where I was; there were too many people in between.

“OK, OK, let’s take our seats,” said the RA. “My name is Yolanda, and I’m a senior majoring in political science. And I’ll be your Resident Assistant this year. This means I’m here for you. There will be a lot of things that are new to you as you’re getting started, but I was there not too long ago, so I know how it is. My door is always open, and I have all the contacts for everything you might need.” She went over all the various services the university had to offer – food service, health service, counseling, exercise facilities, entertainment, and so on. She then went over the rules. All pretty standard stuff. No illegal drugs. No underage drinking. No overnight visitors in student rooms unless they lived in the same building. And so on.

When she was done, she opened the floor for questions. There were a few, and Yolanda answered them as best she could – how to get parking permits for students who had cars, mass transit information for students who didn’t, schedules of famous guest speakers who were coming to campus during the year, and others. But I couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t been covered. So I went back to my room.

“Hey,” said May, “Olivia and I – we’re roomies – are gonna go get some supper at 5. Do you wanna come? Do you have a roommate? Invite her too.”

“Oh, I was going to have a roommate, but it turns out she withdrew from school,” I said, explaining what I’d learned. “So I’m all by myself this semester at least, maybe all year.”

“Wow, lucky you!” said May. “Well, anyway, you’re invited. Wanna come?”

“Sure!” I said. “I’ll meet you out here at 5.” CARLY and I went back to my room. Student accommodations hadn’t needed to be changed too much with the advent of ITAs; they had a corner with a charging station that they returned to when inactive, and that prevented them from being in the way. Their holographic emitters were able to project their interface windows anywhere within a small room. Of course, CARLY was going to be pretty active at times, considering what Mom had set her up to do. I worried about that; I really did.

“It’s one hour until supper time,” said CARLY once we were back in my room. “It’s important to make friends, but I am detecting some stress levels. Let’s get your diaper changed, and then I’m putting you in your crib for a nap until it’s time for supper.

“But –” I tried to protest.

“Your mother’s orders,” said CARLY. “Babysitter mode activated. Now you need to be a good little girl and hold still for your diaper change.” She didn’t quite pick me up and carry me to the changing table, but it was close to that. My diaper was soaked; I really did need a change. Soon I was in a cute, thick, babyish diaper and a snug onesie, and I was in a crib – my crib – with a pacifier in my mouth, holding a stuffed animal, and CARLY was tucking me in to sleep. “Goodnight, Baby Christina,” said CARLY as she gave me a wonderful pat on my bottom. “I’ll wake you up in time to get you changed for supper.”

At first I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but when there was nothing to do but lie there and suck on my pacifier, it wasn’t long before I drifted off.

I awoke to CARLY gently shaking my shoulder and saying in a cooing singsong, “Baby Christina … Baby Christina … it’s time to get ready for supper …”

CARLY literally picked me from the crib like an infant and carried me to the potty. Before I was awake enough to fuss, she had removed my onesie and my diaper, then had me in the tub filled with strawberry smelling bubbles.

CARLY took a very thick, but soft washcloth and washed my face and .. other places that had gotten messy while I slept. I couldn’t help myself as something wonderful came over me and I started splashing and playing in the water. After washing my body, my hair, and rinsing it out with a spray attachment she had brought, CARLY once again picked me up like a toddler and stood me on my feet next to the tub on a very soft and thick bathmat.

CARLY dried me from head to foot in a super large and wonderfully smelling towel. The tickles along the way made me giggle and squirm like any little girl in this predicament. CARLY sat me on the closed lid of the potty and picked up a large, stiff bristled brush from the counter and started brushing my hair. Oooo it felt so good too, especially since the shampoo CARLY had used kept my long hair from tangling. The heat from the dryer and her expert use of the brush and several other items, caused my hair to dry in the most adorable sausage curls.

She gathered a handfull of curls on each side of my head and made ponytails with a barrette clip that looked like a ladybug. CARLY walked to a large drawer in the counter and pulled it open. Neatly arranged were many very cute pullup diaper panties for big girls.

CARLY took a soft yellow pair with butterflies and kittens on it and held them out as she cooed softly, “Come step in your panties baby. I need to finish dressing you. It’s almost time for supper with your playmates.”

I said with a bit of frustration, “Now wait a minute CARLY …”

CARLY said in a soft irresistible coo, “Hush, child. Come step into you panties. I have to finish dressing you so you wont be late.”

It was so weird. I felt the tingle rush all through me as my body stood and silently and obediently walked over to CARLY. I was totally thunderstruck as I put a hand on her for balance and stepped into the pullups unable to fuss or resist in anyway. As CARLY pulled them up I knew the baby protocol was enabled and in force. I could feel the soft thickness of the diaper panties as she arranged the ruffles around the leg openings.

CARLY cooed softly, “I’m sorry Christina. I can’t help it. Your mother and father agreed that I’m to be your Nana or babysitter and have enabled parental controls to make sure it happens. What they want you to be is a little toddler that has the ability to pretend to be a big girl. There are some … things that you will have a tendency towards you will have no control over, but that’s why I’m here. To make sure baby is all comfy and safe and no one suspects you aren’t really an adult.”

“CARLY!!” I gasped, “Baby no wanna –” I put my hands over my mouth as what I said sounded just like a small toddler and not who I wanted to be while out with friends. I realized, I could change it a bit because I could pretend to be a big girl too, “I mean, I don’t want to go out like a baby. I ... I don’t want people to know.”

CARLY had picked up an adorably sexy flutter top that could also pass as a little girl’s top easily, and threaded my arms and head through it. “Don’t worry your pretty little head over that, Baby. CARLY has made the adjustments to your personal profile necessary to make sure you are secretly a toddler who can function and pretend she is a big girl. Now, you will find the mix is very cute, and the guys will find it refreshingly sexy.”

“But, CARLY …” I sounded just like a whiny little girl as I stomped my foot and poked out my bottom lip, “I no wanna bea baby at college.” If I’d been thinking more clearly, I’d have wondered what she’d meant by “personal profile,” but I was well and truly flustered by all of this.

CARLY laughed, “Sorry, Baby Christina, but your parents think this is for the best, and since you are the infant, you are too young to make those kinds of decisions.” CARLY held out a cute pair of boyshorts and cooed in that voice, “Now step into your shorts so I can get you into your shoes and out the door.”

I couldn’t resist as my body obeyed and I stepped into them. After CARLY pulled them up, she had walked over to a cabinet and opened it. That’s when I got to see my reflection in the wall mirror. I didn’t exactly look like a little girl, although the poofy roundness of the pullup panty gave me a really nice round bottom. I most surely looked just like a very pretty and very cute young woman. The outfit was cute, pretty, and sexy all at the same time.

I found myself seated on a chair in the main part of my nursery. CARLY put a pair of tennis shoes on my feet that completed the look. I was astonished at the skill with which CARLY had dressed me. I felt like a little girl, and sort of even looked like one. Although … this was one of the very minor fashion trends some of the college aged kids indulged in. Maybe it would be all right.

“It’s time to go meet your floormates for supper,” said CARLY, opening the partition door. “Come on, Baby Christina.” Once I’d waddled through the door and adjusted my gait so it didn’t make the padding between my legs too obvious, she also opened the door to the hallway for me, then followed me out, ensuring that the door locked itself behind us.

“Wow, look at you,” said May, who was waiting in the lounge for me. “My ITA just makes sure I make it to appointments on time. Looks like yours gets you dressed for supper! And what a cute look!”

“Yeah,” I said, “thanks, but … my ITA was a gift from my parents, and she has certain programs that they want her to run. That includes certain ideas about fashion.”

“Oh dear,” said May. “Olivia was here, but she had to go back and get something, I don’t know what, but – oh, here she comes back.” Olivia and her ITA were returning down the hall.

“Oh, good evening, Christina,” said Olivia. “Hi again, May. Shall we go?”

Something felt off as we walked to the dining hall. I kept catching myself toddling more clumsily, like I had trouble walking, and I kept getting distracted by butterflies and birds. It was as if I had to keep myself focused on acting like an adult. But CARLY wouldn’t let me stray too far.

“So what kind of classes does a graphic arts major take?” asked Olivia. “You’re the first one I’ve met so far who’s taking any sort of arts curriculum here.”

“Oh!” I said, coming back to reality. “Well, this semester I’m doing a lot of the core classes that everybody’s required to take, like the math and English and stuff. But I’ve also got an intro to art history class, and an art techniques class. We’re going to start out with traditional stuff like charcoal pencils and oil and watercolor pants, then by the end of the semester we’ll be doing digital art.”

“Oh, like painting on computers and stuff?” asked May. “That sounds so cool! I wish I could do that!”

“I think there are electives for nonmajors,” I said. “You could take one of those, one of these semesters.”

“I really want to do that!” said May. “POLLY, make a note to look into those!”

Her ITA, a compact blonde female one, nodded and said, “OK. Note stored!”

“We’re here,” said Olivia. Her ITA held the door open for all of us, then followed us in.

“Thank you,” I told the ITA.

“My pleasure,” she said. Olivia was of medium build and had light brown hair, but her ITA was a tall brunette – she looked a bit like May, actually. But Olivia’s ITA was just as no-nonsense as Olivia herself.

We waited in line for our food – it was just like high school or grade school in that respect. But we just scanned our ID bands; our room and board was prepaid. We were able to find a free table, though.

I somehow couldn’t help being a bit messy when I was eating and drinking – I got food on my hands and spilled a few drops of my drink down my face and onto my clothes. But CARLY was always there ready to clean up. “I think Christina needs a bib,” joked May, to my utter embarrassment. Inwardly, though, it felt really good knowing that CARLY would take care of my messes. It was just like my diapers – a huge piece of stress was removed from my life knowing that it was something I wouldn’t have to worry about.

“Don’t be silly,” said Olivia. “What she needs are those clothes that are treated to be stain-proof. The corporation that holds that patent is doing very well for its stockholders right now. Record profits.”

“All of Christina’s outfits are made of that type of fabric,” said CARLY.

“Really?” asked Olivia. “I thought that company made mostly children’s clothes.”

“Yes,” CARLY replied, “although they also just sell the fabric, so the outfits can be cut and assembled in any size.”

“CARLY …” I said, blushing again. She was telling my new friends that I wore children’s clothes, made from a fabric for children, sized up to adult sizes. I looked like an oversized toddler, and now they knew I was dressed like one. I felt my already-wet diaper more acutely than ever.

“Wow,” said May, “it must be nice not to have to worry about stains. But I’ll bet you’re thinking about paint stains. That’s gotta be something art majors have to worry about.”

“Well, from what I hear, nothing gets out oil paint, no matter what fabric,” I said. “That’s what smocks are for.”

“Yeah, well those are basically bibs for artists,” giggled May. “Only it’s paint they keep off your clothes, not food.”

“Well … yeah,” I said. I wasn’t embarrassed this time. All artists who worked in oils wore clothing protection, or wore old clothes they didn’t care about ruining. You could try to get oil paint out of clothes, but the effort often caused damage that shortened the fabric’s lifespan. I knew that much.

May turned and looked at me as she rested her chin on her fist, “I must say, however, I think your outfit is just adorable. I want one and a few others like it. I think I would look sooo cute.”

CARLY said as she brought up a holo-screen with many such outfits in many sizes for all ages of babydolls, “I think this site would be the best. It has every type of outfit in those styles you could imagin and even do custom on demand work.”

Olivia pointed out a really cute romper and some adorable panties, “I would just love those.”

CARLY instantly brought up a sidebar page with some very cute babydoll dresses that were short enough to actually show off some of the lace on the panties. “These would go wonderfully well with the panties I’m sure.”

Olivia used the finger positions and brought up yet again another page. This one had some very precious tops on it. She pointed to a very cute babydoll top and said I would rather wear just this top and the panties.” she giggled, “It would make me feel more like a little girl.”

We all laughed as I began to wonder if Olivia might be a secret baby too. I looked at her. Her eyes sparkled as she flipped slowly through the many pages of adult babydoll items. A smile crossed my face as I imagined her in those panties and a super thick diaper. I knew she didn’t realize they had a plastic lining.

Olivia’s ITA said, “I have added a dozen panties to your shopping cart, and a dozen matching tops to go with them. Would you like me to get a few of those rompers and dresses too?”

Before Olivia could respond, May said, “Oh Oh Oh, I want a couple of those dresses and some matching panties.”

May’s ITA responded, “I have added them to your shopping cart, pending confirmation.”

Olivia’s ITA asked her, “Would you like some of the accessories to go with the panties?”

I saw Olivia’s face blush a strawberry pink for an instant as she replied softly, “Yea, and some of those adorable pins too.”

The ITA responded, “They have been added to your cart.”

May perked up as she said, “What kind of accessories?”

I almost died of embarrassment as CARLY showed her all the diapers, pullups, cute safety pins and other items. The shock caused me to wet my diaper even more as I felt the warmth of my latest potty trickle around my bottom. “Uh, I … must admit,” I said, to distract myself more than anything else, “Olivia, I mean, I wouldn’t have picked you as someone who would wear something so … I don’t know … casual? I just met you, of course, but you seem to dress very professionally.”

“That’s just it,” said Olivia, “I know I’m going into a high-stress career. I’m feeling the stress already. But … seeing these things, they just made me feel like … what if I didn’t always have to be under stress? What if I could revisit, you know, younger times when I didn’t feel like I had all these expectations to live up to all the time?”

“Oh, that makes so much sense now that you explain it,” I said. “I feel … very much the same.”

“Oh, but look at these!” said May, who was looking at the pictures. “These are … well, diapers, like for babies but bigger! And cute safety pins … and wait, some of these outfits said they were … yeah, they’ve got plastic panties built in, linings to keep them dry in case of … accidents?”

“Yeah,” I said, “some of the people who go to these sites are, you know, adult babies?”

“Oh,” said Olivia. “They’re really hated on, on social media. People say they’re all pedos or something. Which doesn’t make any sense, really. I think some people just … need somebody to hate on.”

“Yeah, why do people have to be like that?” asked May. “I’ve heard of them too. Looks to me like all they want to do is be cute and recapture their childhood – regain a sense of innocence, that kind of thing.”

“I guess so?” I said. I didn’t know. “I do remember reading that that’s what they used to say about gay men, and trans women – it’s like haters only know one song and just sing it over and over again.”

“‘Won’t someone please think of the children?’” said May in a mocking voice. “How about, you know, listening to the children and asking them what they need? Anyway, what I need is some of these cute clothes! And it looks like I’ll have some soon.” She turned to her ITA. “Add one of each of these,, plus … a dozen of those … and a dozen of those. Place the order.”

“Confirmed,” her ITA said. “They should be arriving by mail drone shortly.

“Oh, this place uses drone delivery,” said Olivia. “More and more places are doing that. There seems to be a future in it – for now, until the market is saturated.”

“You’re doing it again,” said May.

“Oh gosh!” said Olivia. “You’re right. I’m supposed to be relaxing.”

“I … uh …” I was about to tell them. I stopped myself.

“You what?” asked May. “You’re supposed to be relaxing too?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “And I am. I’m … trying to be very relaxed. With my new friends. You guys want to be friends, right?”

“Yeah, I’m not averse to the concept,” said Olivia.

“Sure!” said May. “We just met today, but you seem great!”

“Well I was going to say … my mom wanted to make sure I could relax,” I said. “After I found this place with ITA software, she set her up with this babysitter app and sent me off to college with it … she’s supposed to switch into babysitter mode whenever I seem stressed.”

“Oh,” said May. “And ITAs have all these sensors and things, like to measure your heart rate and voice stress analysis.”

“But what’s babysitter mode mean?” asked Olivia.

“Umm well it means … baby time for me,” I said softly, blushing brightly.

“Wait, you mean?” asked May. “She … puts you in baby things?”

I felt as if my ears had caught fire I was blushing so hard. I really didn’t know what to say. Yes, it was true, even my “adult” wardrobe was skewed toward more of an infant style that anything else, and actually always had been in some ways.

Olivia’s eyes grew big as she saw what happened, “What? So your ITA treats you like a baby when you’re stressed? I hope that means only when you aren’t out in public?”

I couldn’t speak, so I just nodded.

May giggled as she said with glee, “That is so kewlies! Now that we are done eating lunch, I think we need to get back to the mail room and collect our new items. I can’t wait to try some of them on.”

Olivia added, “Yea, and we can get CARLY to show us where the babysitter program came from. We can all have a bit of relaxation.”

I was totally mind blown as Olivia took me by the hand and started leading me back towards our rooms. They all giggled and talked about playing infant for the rest of the afternoon if the new outfits had arrived.

By the time we had gotten to Olivia’s room, not only was my diaper getting to be soggy enough for CARLY to check me right in front of them, but the drone parcel delivery had arrived. While Olivia unlocked the door to her room, May gathered up the many packages and started carrying them in. Of course, CARLY had me by the hand at that point and led me to my room for a much needed change.

By the time I came back, Olivia had changed into the cute shorty flutter top, what looked like a rather thick pullup, and a matching pair of those really cute plastic lined panties. May was fretting because her delivery hadn’t yet arrived, and she had POLLY check to see what the current disposition of her order was.

CARLY led me back to their room wearing a bathrobe in case others were around, but the hallway was quiet at the moment. I removed it once I was in May and Olivia’s room. All I had on by then were a thick diaper, a pair of really cute and lacy plastic lined panties, and my top.

May turned and clasped her hands together as she exclaimed, “Oh, my. The two of you are so cute!”

POLLY announced, “Your packages are arriving right now. We need to go to the mail room and collect them.”

While May and POLLY went to gather her purchases, Olivia and I more or less sat in the middle of the floor and played with several of the cute plushies she had purchased. I had to admit, it was relaxing and fun, especially now that I knew my new friends were babies too.

“I want you to know,” I said to Olivia, “I so appreciate that you trust me enough to relax this way with me. It could really ruin my social life if this came out about me. The same’s probably even more true for you.”

“We can make a pact,” said Olivia. “None of us reveals this to anyone else.”

“Deal. We can add May to the pact when she comes back, if that’s OK with her.”

“Yeah, we’ll talk to her. But in the meantime, Mr. Bear thinks these blocks are too tall. RAWR!” Olivia knocked over a pile of blocks she’d been building with her plushie. I giggled.

Soon, May and POLLY came back carrying several packages wrapped in plain brown mailers. As soon as the door closed, May jumped up and down excitedly. “I could hardly keep from running down the hall! I want to open them all right now!”

“That one should be the babydoll nightie,” said POLLY as May opened one package. She continued, “And that one should be your new onesies … and that one should be your plastic lined rumba panties … and that one should be the diapers … and that one should be your bibs, baby bottles, and pacifiers.” May ripped one package after another open like it was Christmas morning.

“Wow, you’re going all the way,” said Olivia. “By the way, we’re all going to make an agreement – this is a secret. You can reveal all you want about yourself to others if you want, for some reason, but our secrets are ours.”

May paused in her package-opening frenzy. “Yeah, that makes sense. I agree. I keep your secrets, you keep mine.”

“CARLY has shared the location of the ‘Babysitter’ sim pack with SUE and myself,” POLLY told May. “I feel I should mention that the sim pack is not merely ‘Babysitter’ in nature. Its settings range from General Audience to Mature, and although it is quite customizable, its presets include such scenarios as Babysitter – of course – Strict Nanny, Bondage Governess, and Doting Mother, along with many others. There appears to be quite a range of audiences.”

“Oh my …” said Olivia. “I, um, have heard of that sort of thing, but I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea. SUE, please download the sim pack in question, but do not execute until I go over the settings.”

“Yeah, same thing, POLLY,” said May. “I might want to try being kept in diapers sometime, but maybe let’s not jump right into that.”

“Understood,” said POLLY and SUE. “Downloaded. Awaiting instructions.”

Olivia and May both looked at the configuration windows that their ITAs displayed in midair. They both chose something considerably less strict than what my mother had chosen for me, and of course, they didn’t have parental overrides preventing them from changing the settings. I felt slightly left out.

Olivia seemed to want activatable stress reduction sessions with SUE as a helpful babysitter who treated her as a young girl who was mostly potty trained but had occasional accidents. May, however, seemed to want her ITA to act like a nurturing mother whenever she was in private, which included when either Olivia or myself was present, treating her as if she were a preverbal infant, but she retained the ability to override this, just in case of special circumstances.

“Oh dear,” said POLLY, “my baby is out of her diaper. Come here, Sweetheart, come to Mommy.”

She collected a giggling May and laid her on her bed, proceeding to diaper her securely with her new diapers. Before long May was dressed more or less like me. She had a butterfly-sleeved onesie with a crinkly diaper and some of the rumba panties under it – the onesie did cover up some of the ruffles – and a pacifier in her mouth, and she was on the floor playing with Olivia and me. We all seemed to be having a wonderful time, forgetting we were college students. Neither of them seemed to have the acupressure thing turned on, so they got to choose when they used their diapers or training panties.

I’m not real sure what happened in my head, or how long I was in the fugue state, but the next thing I knew, CARLY had me on my back held aloft by my ankles and was cleaning my bottom with a baby powder smelling baby wipe.

I saw May and Olivia in a play area that their ITAs must have set up, snickering and giggling as CARLY finished cleaning my bottom and set it in the warm soft embrace of a thick diaper, powdered me, then pulled it between my legs and pinned it on.

CARLY cooed softly as she threaded my panites back on, “That’s a good baby girl. All clean and comfy now.”

She picked me up and carried me over to the others and set me down before SUE picked up Olivia and carried her over to the bed I’d been on, which had been covered with a protective mat to make a changing counter. All the while Olivia was kicking and fussing and whining about how she was a big girl and didn’t need changing.

After SUE pulled down her plastic lined panties and opened the diaper, it was more than obvious that she too needed changing in the worst way. If I’d been in a fully adult mindset at the time, I’d have wondered why that had happened, but it appeared that they’d made some sort of mistake when they’d set up their parameters, because her ITA had applied the acupressure technique, and it seemed to have been quite effective. Now it was my turn to giggle and snicker at the big girl as she was cleaned and rediapered.

I turned to May and said, “Is ur turnes nextus.” I didn’t know why I was speaking like that, but I just felt so relaxed. My mind was regressed as a result of relaxing in such an infantile environment, I suppose.

May’s eyes got large as she stood up. I could hear it as she too poopied in her diaper just as Olivia and I had. Apparently May had also misapplied that configuration parameter. May gasped, “I .. I couldn’t help it. Everything I did only made it happen more.”

I giggled, “Course, silly. Ura baby an babies does that.” I shrugged, “It happens cuz it does.”

“I should be worried, I really should,” said May. “But somehow it all feels OK.”

When SUE brought Olivia back to the play are and set her down, it was POLLY’s turn to pick up the fussing and squirming May and carry her to the changing table, same as the other two of us. The other two ITAs stood close by and observed, but didn’t interfere in any way as we all got our diapers changed just like the infants we were acting like.

After a few minutes of May and Olivia whining about pooping in their diaper, POLLY said, “May, your mother called and said she will come by and see you. She says several large packages for you have arrived, and she’s bringing them with her for you. It appears that there was a mistake in some of your deliveries, and they went to your home address. Fortunately, your mother lives nearby, and her ITA is quite capable of helping her with them.”

May nearly panicked. “Mom’s coming?” She frantically started changing her clothes. “OMG! I hope none of them say what they are on the outside.”

POLLY said as she held out a pair of pullups for May, “You might want to wear these for a while until your body reacclimates.” She helped May change into them, and as she did so she undid the acupressure change. “Undoing the acupressure is a gradual process, and the time to completion varies widely from one individual to another.”

“Yes,” said CARLY. “For Christina here, she recovers her bowel control in under an hour, but her bladder control takes weeks to return. It is just better to keep the little tyke in diapers.”

“Weeks?” asked Olivia. “I can’t be diapered for weeks!”

“Perhaps you may wish to revisit my configuration settings,” said SUE. “However, weeks is an unusually long recovery time. Christina must simply be one for whom those particular nerves are very sensitive.”

“You have to wear diapers now?” asked Olivia as May continued to get ready. SUE was starting to get Olivia dressed for visitors again. CARLY was putting my bathrobe back on me so she could take me back down the hall to my room.

“Yeah, I’d be wetting my panties if I didn’t,” I said. “CARLY can do the moves or whatever it is to undo the acupressure technique, but we both know that before my bladder control recovers, she’s going to be babying me again, so I’ve effectively got a baby’s bladder. It’s diapers for me. Luckily they make some very absorbent diapers that disappear under clothes nowadays. Unluckily they swell up when they get wet, and … I’m basically always wet.” It was true. I’d been trickling into my diapers constantly, and although I didn’t feel damp, I was sure the super absorbent polymers in them were already hard at work.

“If May’s mother and her ITA will be arriving soon, perhaps we should return to your room for now,” CARLY said to me.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed. “Will you guys let me know what happens?”

“Sure, as long as it’s not too terribly bad,” said May. They were dressed normally now – on the outside; I knew their ITAs had left them in training panties. Both ITAs were moving the furniture back into its normal arrangement.

“OK, I’ll talk to you later then!” I said. It wasn’t very late, but as soon as CARLY had me back in my room, she immediately changed me again, into super thick nighttime diapers and a baby sleeper with both attached feet and attached mittens. The mittens were even made of thicker material, giving me the manual dexterity of a baby. She popped a pacifier into my mouth and clipped it to my sleeper.

“CARLY!” I said as best I could. “What if I want to talk to May and Olivia later?”

“Then we’ll deal with that later,” CARLY said. “For now, it’s past a baby’s bedtime, so you should sleep now. You don’t need to walk or play; you’ll be safe from leaks and from getting your hands into mischief. We don’t need you pulling things off tables or sticking things into electrical outlets.”

“But I don’t …” I started. I blushed as I realized she was right. When I was in my regressed mindset, I didn’t know what I was doing. I might well do just those things. I might break something expensive or do myself injury. “I might, though, I guess.”

“You’re way too little to be trusted in an un-childproofed room,” said CARLY. “We’ll be working on that, but for now I have to keep you safe.” The thing is, I did feel safe. In my crib, I was so thickly diapered that I could barely even turn over, and the way my hands were padded I could barely hold a teddy bear, let alone anything smaller. But it also meant that I wasn’t expected to do anything for myself; CARLY would take care of everything for me. This made me feel even more relaxed. There were going to be stressful things I’d have to do at college, but I knew there’s always be this oasis of calm to return to.

It’s was like the bottom falling out of a box. My stress disappeared completely, and with it my need to act like an adult. I remember CARLY singing a soft song to me and babbling back at her until I fell asleep.

I awoke gently. It was the next morning, but it was super early. The sun hadn’t even risen. CARLY watched from her charging station but came over to me as she noticed I was awake. “Good morning, Christina. You aren’t stressed at all, and I’m glad. I’m sure you need a diaper change, and possibly a shower.” Luckily these rooms had their own bathrooms. CARLY undressed me and helped me take a shower. She didn’t seem to be in babysitter mode, probably because I wasn’t feeling any stress.

I did wonder how Olivia and May had gotten along the night before, with May’s mom coming and bringing some sort of large packages. But I’d find out soon enough. Once CARLY had diapered me and dressed me in some adorable shortalls with my hair in twin ponytails, we went looking for some breakfast for me, and it turned out that May and Olivia were already awake. We met on the way to the dining hall.

“Soooo what did May’s mom bring?” I asked. “And … does she know?”

“I don’t know what she knows?” said May. “I was half afraid that POLLY had ordered me some kind of crib or something – furniture would be super expensive and super heavy! Mom’s ITA could handle it, I’m sure, but Mom would know something was up. But no, it turned out to be …” and she whispered to avoid being overheard by the others who were heading to breakfast too, “... two huge packs of diapers! They look super babyish and they’re so thick! I didn’t know they were this thick. I’m going to waddle when I walk!”

“They are only for private playtime,” said POLLY. “But they will assist in creating the appropriate environment. However, under that strappy babydoll dress of yours are those cute panties that match.”

“Some arrived for Olivia too,” said SUE, “but they were delivered to the correct address.”

“Hey, did your acupressure wear off?” I asked.

“I’m not sure?” replied May. “I woke up in wet night diapers, but so far I’m dry after my shower.” she giggled and figited like a little girl as she lifted the short him of her cute dress, “I want to sorta keep these dry, if I can. Not real sure how big a girl I am right now.

“It would appear that your bladder recovers in under eight hours,” POLLY added. “That is longer than average, but not nearly as long as Christina.” I blushed.

“Olivia’s bladder recovered before bedtime,” said SUE. “It would appear that neither of them has longer than average bowel recovery time. Olivia, however, is wearing training panties just in case.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Olivia said. “Although being talked about as if I’m not here does make me feel like a baby, it’s true.”

SUE suddenly reached over and checked Olivia’s panties like a little girl, “Still dry and comfy. I did bring some fresh pullups along just in case.” Olivia blushed red as a beet but said nothing as SUE insured her pullups were indeed dry.

At that same time, CARLY pulled open the back of my shortall and checked me. I was so embarrassed it felt like my face was on fire. While this was going on, POLLY seemed to switch on too and checked May’s panties to make sure she was dry. “CARLY! What if somebody sees?” We were in public, after all. But on the other hand, every ITA has a sophisticated suite of cameras and other sensors. They can tell if someone’s looking our way or close enough to hear something.

We all stood for a shocked instant looking at each other after it happened. May suddenly giggled and said in a cute way, “Guess us little girls gotta get useta that. Am sure we gonna have a few times our panties are going to be wet.”

SUE said, “I’m sure. Little girls your age do have accidents now and again.”

With this, our ITAs took each of us by a hand and walked us the rest of the way to the dining hall. The three of us were sort of self conscious about the fact were were more or less dressed like toddlers. The guys – or at least some of them, anyway – took immediate notice and began letting us know with their glances how sexy they thought we all were. I guess some guys prefer a more mature look. And not all guys are into girls, of course. And I noticed at least a couple girls glancing at us, too.

By the time we got to the buffet part of the dining room, we had managed to get rid of the group of guys, although the woman behind the counter serving commented, “You are three of the most precious and cute girls to come through here. Most wear ragged jeans and loose fitting T-Shirts with some kind of weird slogan or the picture of one of their rock star idols or some such thing.”

I replied, “My ITA makes sure I won’t be dressed in anything ragged or profane, you can count on it.”

May and Olivia agreed the same as with their ITAs. Theirs weren’t configured by their parents, though.

The woman gave each of us an extra helping as she replied, “Well, girls, do be careful. Some around here are going to very jealous of you. The bunch of you are as adorable as any babydoll, which is a condition they might not be able to have.”

We thanked the woman and took our trays to an empty table and sat. Our ITAs actually pulled up chairs and sat with us and made it look like a group of friends having breakfast – as with other restaurants, there were few small tables, since most people had ITAs nowadays. Of course, there were the random guys and girls who would wander by and comment or say hi and introduce themselves. Some would stop and chat for a bit and spread the usual news and local gossip.

One very large woman dressed in raggy jeans and a denim bikers jacket, decorated with a dagger dripping red surrounded by fire on its back, stopped and snorted, “So. Just what do we have here? Looks like we have some real cutesie girls in our midst.”

SUE and CARLY stood at that point, since they were the closest to her. CARLY said in a soft but noticeably menacing tone, “And just who are you?” She looked the scrubby woman over from head to foot, “Obviously you desperately need to be introduced to a washcloth.”

We couldn’t help it as we began to twitter and sniggle like little girls.

The woman frowned darkly as SUE obviously was more than ready to intervene should the woman become more aggressive. She said with a growl in her voice, “I’m Big Bertha, an’ I run this here campus. All of ya will hear more about this.”

By this time, POLLY had also stood, and she said, “I think not, young ... whatever kind of primate you happen to be.” We all giggled again “What I think will happen is that you and your kind will leave these girls totally alone. I’m quite sure you wouldn’t want to face the consequences of any other type of recourse.”

Bertha said nothing. It was more than obvious she was furious, but looking at SUE, POLLY, and CARLY all standing and scowling at her, she chose retreat would be a better tactic than further confrontation and left. We watched as her ITA joined her. None of use could believe that oversized butch type would choose an ITA as petite and cute as the one that apparently belonged to her. Then again, maybe it would follow, given her lifestyle choices.

“OK, she’s scary,” I said. “Should we be worried?”

“Well, we shouldn’t worry that she’ll beat us up or something,” said Olivia, “because we’ve got three ITAs with us, and hers wouldn’t join in.” ITAs are all programmed with a fundamental override not to engage in violence except in defense of their owners; it’s illegal to program an ITA to fight. There are android combat drones operated by law enforcement and the military, but they’re completely different machines, not ITAs at all. “But when she says she runs this campus, she might mean socially, which could mean she could retaliate by trying to damage our reputations. I’m now wondering how much of that is bluster, but she might have social clout in some circles. I don’t know enough. But I know who we can ask. And we will. Later.”

“Bertha Kelso,” said CARLY. “Star of the university women’s soccer team. Grades are the minimum needed to keep her athletic scholarship – I can’t actually look up anyone’s grades, but there are several news stories about her almost getting kicked out for poor academic performance. She does get away with quite a bit because she wins games. Accusations of violent outbursts seem to be swept under the rug by the administration. She does seem to have a cadre of hangers-on, most probably because her prospects for fame after graduation are high. Oh, and she is having her ITA listen in on our conversation.”

“Duly noted,” said SUE. We wouldn’t talk about our baby stuff, then. Instead, we talked about what classes we had, and there was no pants-checking until we got back to the dorm.

After we left the cafeteria, we saw Bertha storm out of the building in a major huff. I didn’t know what she was going to do until later. I found out that she was so angry over someone actually having the gall to back talk her that she couldn’t think about anything other than getting revenge. She went directly to the gym and met up with her cronies.

She growled, “Girls, come here. We have to have a war council.” I know this because I’ve seen the video from their ITAs. Yeah, that doesn’t usually get saved or shown to anyone unless it’s subpoenaed in court, which should tell you how things were going to go for them, and for us.

One of the girls picked up the soccer ball and said, “Oooo we gonna get to kick some butt?”

Bertha pulled up a chair by the exercise machines and sat. “Yeah, we gonna get us some really cute tail and put it in the wringer.”

A rather shapely blonde in tight gym shorts and a strappy T-Top came over and sat. “Tell me about this.” She leaned back and crossed her legs out in front of her. “Sounds like it might be interesting.”

“VALORIE, get your tin plated butt over here and show the gang those ... those ... girls.”

Bertha’s ITA came shyly over and seemed to actually be in fear of her as she started the projection of Olivia, May, and myself giggling and sniggling at Bertha being belittled by our ITAs.

Another of the women said, “I know just what to do. Why don’t we do this to those little cutesie girls. We can start by …” and they all gathered around and started making plans. But I’m not spoiling the story by telling you what they were yet.

My class schedule was messed up that first semester. I had classes from 9 a.m. to noon on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then again from 1 to 3. It was like a job. But on Tuesday and Thursday I had barely anything, just a Thursday afternoon lab – well, the university called it a lab class, but it was really a studio session attached to an art class. Olivia and May expressed their sympathy – their classes were much more spaced out, although Olivia had a Tuesday night class that went for three hours, and neither May nor myself had anything like that.

So it was that I was in one class after another until lunchtime, when I barely had time to grab something, get back to my room so CARLY could change me, and get my stuff for my afternoon classes. I didn’t get to see Olivia or May all day until supper time. However, of course, we could send messages to each other via our ITAs and figure out when to meet up.

When that first awful week had come to an end, I had just walked into my room when CARLY shut and locked the door. I felt it as her strong but gentle hands lifted me off my feet and started undoing my jeans.

“CARLY!!” I gasped, “What are you doing? Olivia will be here any minute.”

CARLY replied as she expertly finished removing my clothes and my wet diaper, “I know. That’s why my baby girl is going to be all clean and properly diapered and dressed.”

I had absolutely no say in her placing me in the tub and filling it with honeysuckle smelling bath oils. She washed my body as well as my hair quickly and efficiently. The many tickles and soft caresses in tickly places took my mind totally as I splashed and played in the bubbly water.

Next thing I knew, CARLY had me diapered and smelling wonderfully like baby powder as she pulled a really cute babydoll sundress over my head that matched the plastic lined rumba panties she had put on me.

Just as CARLY had finished brushing my hair and putting it up in ponytails, a knock came to my door. CARLY went to the door and opened it while I was sitting splay legged on the bed.

Olivia bounded in wearing a long overcoat. Her ITA took it off her, and underneath, she was wearing the cutest fairy princess romper with all the lace and ruffles. She stood and blushed for a bit as SUE pulled open the back of her adorable romper and checked the very thick diaper Olivia was wearing. I could hear the soft crinkle of plastic as SUE checked.

I couldn’t help myself as I started to snicker. I said, “Oooo, Olivia is such a big girl.”

Olivia crossed her arms, poked out her bottom lip and said in a pouty voice, “Amma big girl. Too old ta be in diapers.”

SUE cooed softly as she pressed the spots that relieved Olivia of the ability to control her potty, “I’m sure, little girl. Let’s us just see how big you are in about thirty minutes.”

Olivia said, still in a huffy voice, “May gonna be here enny minute an shea baby like you.” and she pointed at me.

Again, another knock on the door, CARLY answered it. In walked POLLY leading May by the hand. She too was in an overcoat that POLLY removed and hung with the other. May was dressed in a very cute peach pink flutter top, matching rumba panties with white lace and ruffles, and obviously a super thick diaper.

POLLY made a huge deal out of checking May’s diaper. I noticed that POLLY used the same pressure points on May that relieved her of the ability to control her potty.

I said with a huff, “But CARLY, I gots tonsa homework an an an no can does it iffn Imma baby.”

CARLY bent over and kissed me on the nose, “Don’t worry your pretty little head over that. It has already been taken care of for the weekend. There is a schedule in place that will grant you proper baby time and sufficient study time. Relax and let your babysitter be in charge.”

I could just let CARLY tell me when it was time to play and when it was time to study? I could feel my stress melting away already. It was just like knowing that I didn’t have to worry about keeping my diapers dry, knowing that she’d take care of that.

There was a moment of babyish bliss then, as Olivia, May, and I played in the baby half of my room while our ITAs periodically checked our diapers and kept us in line, doubtless talking to one another silently via digital signals. I remembered everything, but it was all in a haze of happy regressed innocence. It was strange – in this state I could clearly remember things from when I was very little, but when I came out of baby mode I could barely remember what had happened minutes before, let alone things that happened when I was two years old.

I barely registered when CARLY said, “OK, baby Christina, time for beddy-byes!” POLLY and SUE said similar things to their charges and changed their diapers before wrapping them in their overcoats and taking them back to their room. CARLY carefully changed my diaper, cooing to me soothingly and giving the occasional tickle before snapping me into my nighttime onesie and tucking me into my crib, sucking soothingly on my pacifier. Soft lullaby music played.

When morning came and I started to stir, so did CARLY, changing me out of my nighttime diaper and helping me get into the shower, then diapering me up and dressing me in what passed for adult clothes for me. “Let’s get you to breakfast,” she said, “and when you get back, it’ll be time for homework. If you get enough done, it can be playtime again later.”

“OK CARLY,” I said. “You really do have this planned out.”

“It’s what I’m programmed to do,” said CARLY. “Olivia and May are ready to go to breakfast, say their ITAs.”

So we met up in the hallway and headed for the dining hall. We saw Bertha and a bunch of other young women, along with a few young men as well, the athletic clique, I suppose, or one of them. But they paid no attention to us – or at least seemed to.

“There’s that Bertha again,” said Olivia. “Why’d she have to come over and make trouble for us? She’s got her group of friends, her own world; what’s the point of causing trouble for some freshmen she doesn’t even know?”

“It’s probably her feeling of dominance,” said May. “It drives her on the soccer field and makes her a better player, but she doesn’t know how to turn it off when it isn’t needed.”

“Whoa, are you going to major in psychology?” I asked May.

“I mean … maybe? I’m still undecided,” she said.

We got our donuts, cereal, sticky rolls, and so forth and promptly got frosting all over our mouths and fingers. CARLY was always cleaning my face and hands with wet wipes, it seems. Somehow she did it discreetly, but I felt very much like a baby eating with my fingers.

And then … it was back to my room and hitting the books. I couldn’t really work on my art assignment there; I didn’t have the supplies, equipment, or space. That was what the studio time on Thursday was for. But I still had required classes, like Freshman English, Freshman Math, and that kind of thing – classes you couldn’t graduate without passing, so most students got them over with by taking them first. That’s what my advisor had suggested. But I didn’t feel much like a graphic arts major, doing all this English and math homework. Still, it had to be done, so I worked on it and did the best I could.

It was lunchtime that Saturday, so CARLY got me a diaper change and again met up with May and Olivia. The dining hall was already getting to be boring – same place every day, although the meals were always different. But it was never boring eating with my new friends. I wondered whether Kelly was meeting new friends at State. I’d have to remind myself to ask CARLY to set up a time to holo chat with Kelly – but right now wasn’t the right time to mention another friend May and Olivia hadn’t met.

They had spaghetti and meat sauce for lunch, and we all got heaping helpings on our trays. Just as we’d seen an empty table and were heading for it, some huge guy came bumbling by and rammed into my tray, and just as he was sarcastically saying, “Oops, ‘scuse me,” I was sure the sauce was going to end up all over my clothes, but it didn’t happen. In the blink of an eye, CARLY had positioned herself to carefully catch the plate and tray at a perfect angle to prevent any spill at all. POLLY had similarly caught my drink with lightning precision, and SUE had caught my side dish of applesauce. Not one drop spilled. The three ITAs placed the tray back into my hands and placed everything back on it, so quickly that it seemed as if nothing had happened.

“Aaaa! What?” I was saying, and Olivia and May were also confused, but the ITAs led us to the table, and once we had all sat down, they played videos of the unknown guy in the moments before his collision with me. He had deliberately gone out of his way to bump me. And he had come from … that direction. We all looked to see the table of athletes, including Bertha – they didn’t look like they were looking at us, but considering their childish plan had failed, they probably didn’t want to call attention to themselves.

“The student who collided with you is this student-athlete named Johnny Klein,” said CARLY, showing a holo picture of him. “Again, I cannot normally look up student records, but as he’s a member of the wrestling team, there are frequent articles about him on the student news site, including many photos.”

“Probability is high that this related to last weekend’s incident with Bertha Kelso,” said SUE.

“Probability is also high that further immature incidents will follow,” said POLLY, “especially considering that this one was unsuccessful.”

“Calculating,” said CARLY.

It wasn’t long after that that we had yet another run in with one of the girls in Bertha’s clique. As May, Olivia, and I along with our ITAs walked down the hall giggling over some silly infantile thing, one of the large girls from the soccer team “happened” to rapidly come around a corner and attempt to knock us all down.

POLLY stepped in the way at the last possible instant and reversed the tables, knocking her down with some rather unintended force. It was more than apparent the young woman had intended to hurt at least one of us as she bounced off of POLLY and slammed into the locker, then proceeded to land face down. The young woman's nose was bleeding profusely.

She shrieked loudly, “Y .. you .. you hit me!! You broke my nose!” and started crying loudly and making a huge scene as she kept insisting she had been hit without provocation.

CARLY stepped in immediately and cooed softly, “Didums faww down go boom? Aww, here, let me help stop the bleeding.” CARLY immediately brought her medtech protocols online, which all ITAs had in case they could help save a life, reset the young woman’s nose so it wouldn’t be misshapen, and handed the woman a tissue. CARLY had her hold it in place for a few minutes, and managed to stop the bleeding.

Several security ITAs arrived to investigate what happened. CARLY, POLLY, and SUE all immediately and silently transmitted their video of the incident to the security ITAs as the athlete continued to scream and insist she had been hit without provocation and had been the victim of an unprovoked attack. The security ITAs also downloaded the video from the security cams hung near the ceiling.

“Please come with us, Ms. Jespersen, and we will escort you to the nearest campus health station,” said the security ITAs, helping the screaming, crying young woman off the floor and leading her away.

“Should we be worried?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Olivia. “If she can claim we made her miss a match, the athletic department can make trouble for us. They bring in a lot of money to the university. But on the other hand, they have all the video. And this can’t be the only time she’s tried something like this.”

Several really pretty girls dressed in very adorable sun dress outfits walked up, followed by ITAs with their arms full of books. One of them said, “Hi, my name’s Mandy, this is Beth, and the one with all the chemistry books is Sally. Oooo, we saw what happened. Those meanies always try and hurt us. We’ve filed complaints, but since they’re all jocks and important athletes on the college teams, they get away with it.”

Beth said, “Yea. It’s really good to see one of them get what’s coming to ‘em too.”

All the girls nodded.

Sally said, “Now you’re gonna have to be very careful. You hurt one of them, and they’re gonna try and get back at you for it.”

POLLY replied, “Not if we have anything to do about it. We are programmed to protect and defend. If they try anything violent, they are going to get hurt just like this time.”

May said, “That’s why that girl prolly done that. She was trying to get back at us because that Bertha girl came to us and was gonna try and bully us.”

I said, “Yea, but our ITAs stopped it and chased her off. Sorta had another run in with them at lunch too.”

Olivia said, “One of those meatheaded male things tried to spill spaghetti all over us at lunch. Didn’t work out though; our ITAs again intervened and put a stop to it.”

Sally said with a bit of fear in her tone, “Best be careful. Those in that group are real mean and nasty. Don’t have much in the way of manners either.”

Olivia nodded. “My worry is that they will try something that our ITAs won’t be able to easily circumvent. I’m frankly amazed that they’ve tried what they did. They’re obviously not thinking clearly; they know we all have ITAs – it isn’t as if most people don’t.”

“So – Mandy, Beth, Sally,” I said, reminding myself of their names, “you say they’ve caused you trouble before? Why? I don’t know what we did to Bertha to make her mad – what did you do?”

“Nothing,” said Mandy with a shrug. “I don’t understand it. We’re all sophomores, so we’ve been dealing with this for a year. And none of us knows why they picked us to pick on.”

“I will say that I love your outfits!” said May. “Soooo cute!”

“Aw! Thanks!” said Sally. “Yours too! And you’re all freshmen?”

“Yes,” said Olivia. “And that makes me wonder … is it something they don’t like about how we all dress? That seems to be the only consistent thread.”

“Oh!” said May. “What if Bertha has a deep resentment of someone in her life who dresses in a cute or childlike way?”

“Experiment time!” said Beth. “I’m going to volunteer to dress differently for a while and see if anything changes.” She turned to Sally and Mandy. “You two just keep dressing the same.”

“Oh, good idea,” said May. “I’m gonna do the same thing. At least, in public. I’ll dress in dark colors and look all professional.”

“Wait, that’s what I should really be doing,” said Olivia. The two of them discussed the idea.

While they did that, I said, “I really … can’t dress any differently. It’s my mom. She’s only gotten me clothes like this to send me to college in … and she’s set up my ITA to make sure this is how I dress. She’s totally worried about my stress levels. And the thing is … she’s not wrong. I do get stressed out easily. And this works.”

“It’s nothing personal, Christina,” said CARLY. “I cannot contradict your mother’s settings. However, I can also sense that your mother’s stress reduction ideas have in fact been helping you.”

“And it’s not as if I don’t like dressing like this,” I added.

“I know!” said Sally. “It’s totally true that dressing like a cute little kid just pops that stress bubble! For me, anyway.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Beth. “It’s going to be hard to dress all boring. But it’s only temporary, and it’s worth a try if we can learn something.”

May and Olivia decided that Olivia would be the one in our group to dress professionally in public. She was the one hoping to get a business degree one day, after all. We exchanged contact information with Mandy, Beth, and Sally, so we could compare notes later, and maybe get together to have fun. I wasn’t sure about letting on to them about our private baby sessions, but perhaps we’d do that once we got to know them better.

The next morning, CARLY informed me that I had an appointment with the university’s legal office. It was on a Tuesday, so I’d be able to go, but Tuesday was a day that I usually had a full day of stress relief. That is, I was usually in full-on baby mode, probably not in a frame of mind to recite my ABCs, for most of the day. But this was important, so CARLY got me all dressed up and ready to go. I was still in a sun dress, but it was a blue one. I had on some leggings, and some matching flat-soled shoes.

“Please come in, Ms. Inara,” said the lawyer, and CARLY and I entered the room. He wore a blue suit and a black tie, and he had black hair and a beard. “My name is James Greene, and I have to inform you that I represent the university and its interests.”

“Is this about the incident with … Ms. Jespersen?” I asked. “The … alleged incident, I mean?” I’d seen legal TV shows. I hoped I wouldn’t need a lawyer.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics, but Ms. Jespersen is attempting to bring a lawsuit against the university with a demand that you be expelled.”

“What?” I stood up.

“Now, please calm down, Ms. Inara,” said Mr. Greene. “This is not to say that you will be. I’m just saying that her legal representation has said they’ll drop the suit immediately if you are. A pretty standard harassment tactic, frankly. But everyone in this office has seen all the video footage, and she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She charged headlong into what she thought would be either you or one of your friends, and instead one of your ITAs was there. She had no reason to be going in that direction to begin with. She went out of her way to be there, in that place, at that time, presumably to get at you and your friends. So I’m here asking you: Have there been other incidents involving Ms. Jespersen and yourself, or your friends? Or her friends? And again, I must inform you that it’s the university I’m trying to defend in this lawsuit. But it is not university policy to cave in to petty demands from students’ lawyers, even if they’re student athletes with rich families.”

“Oh great, she’s got a rich family,” I said. “Look, I’m not sure why my friends and I are the targets, but it all started with Bertha Kelso.”

“I see,” said Mr. Greene. “I am unable to speak about earlier incidents, but let me just say that I’m not entirely surprised to hear that.”

I explained what had happened from our point of view, and Mr. Greene listened. His ITA listened too, probably recording and transcribing the entire conversation. I was nervous, and CARLY was probably detecting much higher stress levels than I was supposed to be having.

“I understand,” said Mr. Greene. “Frankly, I would prefer if Ms. Kelso got some therapy for her anger issues, but the university can’t force students into therapy, especially student athletes, unless they actually commit crimes, and then they’d have to be pretty serious ones. And nobody wants that.”

“So … am I in any trouble?” I asked.

“No,” said Mr. Greene with a smile. “I’d prefer, of course, if you stayed away from Ms. Kelso, Ms. Jespersen, and all their friends, but I can’t do anything to make you do that, or to keep them away from you if they choose to seek you out. I can, however, make some notes for the security department to program into their ITAs.”

After that meeting, I sent messages to Olivia and May about it, and CARLY took me back to my room. “Your stress levels are through the roof, young lady,” she said as soon as the door closed. “That means you’re due for an immediate course of babysitting. Prepare for lots of cute fun and tickling!”

“Noooooo,” I said, giggling and trying to get away, but she changed my diaper into a much thicker and more babyish looking one, with rainbows and unicorns all over it, and played a toddler cartoon show to keep me amused as she did so.

The time passed in a really nice stress free haze. Next thing I knew, Olivia and May were in the play area with me, and we were having a wonderful plushie fight. What brought me back to my senses was what I thought was a knock on the door.

I gasped. We all were dressed just like infants in diapers, and I had visitors?? No!

CARLY came into the room leading Sally by the hand. She had on a really cute smocktop and it was obvious she had on something rather bulky underneath. I could sort of see it from my angle.

Sally shrieked with joy, “OMG! I knew it! You .. you're a baby too.” She then sort of toddle-ran over to the play area and flopped.

We played, we giggled, we wet our diapers, we got changed, and we got a wonderful snack.

Next thing I knew it was the next morning, and I was sitting up in my crib, sucking my thumb. CARLY came over and lifted me from the crib and proceeded to change my diaper and get me ready for class. She reminded me that I had another appointment with the university legal department and had to give my formal deposition.

The deposition took about an hour. I couldn’t help myself some times as I started giggling at some of the very silly questions Ms. Jespersen’s attorneys asked. It was immediately obvious that they were trying to get me to slip up on details that didn’t have a thing to do with what had happened.

By the time I left the office, Ms. Jespersen’s attorneys were not only more than frustrated by the outcome, but even they were convinced by the evidence that she had been stalking us with the intent to cause harm. Of course, I already knew this wouldn’t go well for her, and the university had to make a decision over what they were going to do about her. I also knew that we still had trouble brewing in the very near future with the jock clique.

“I think it’s highly likely they’ll cause more trouble,” said CARLY as we went back to my room, “but lowering the probability is the fact that the athletic department is almost certainly trying to rein them in. I am unable to access any such information to say for certain, but with the possibility that Ms. Jesperson may be academically disciplined or even suspended, which would also mean suspension from the team, the athletic department will certainly want to prevent a repeat occurrence.”

“Which means that if they try something, they’ll be sneakier about it,” I said grimly.

“They’ll make it something that can’t be traced back to them – or they’ll try to,” said CARLY. “Fortunately these are athletes, not computer hackers, but there’s no reason why they can’t get assistance – though I don’t know why anyone with enough intelligence to cause a real problem would risk their future to help them with some petty vendetta with no real grievance behind it.”

“Oops, ‘scuse me,” said a sandy-haired guy with browline glasses, who was going the other way on the sidewalk and had almost bumped into me, his no-nonsense male ITA following him and advising him to be more careful. “Sorry. Almost ran into you. Um, take care!” He and his ITA kept going. I thought nothing of it just as I thought nothing of anyone else I passed on the sidewalk that afternoon.

But when I got to my room and CARLY was undressing me to put me in my jammies for my nap, she found something stuck to my sundress. “It appears to be attached via a hook-and-loop fastener,” she said. “And it appears to contain a microstorage card.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry your little head about it, Baby Christina,” said CARLY. “I will look into it. Right now, just stay calm and take your nap.” She turned on the calming lullaby music that always sent me right to sleep.

When I woke up, though, she had a message for me. “Time to wake up for supper, Baby Christina,” CARLY said, “but as I’m getting you changed and ready, you might want to look at this recorded message. It was on the microcard that student surreptitiously left with you.”

“Hi, I think your name’s Christina?” said the sandy-haired student, appearing in a popup window. “My name’s Nate – Nate Lamont. I’m a computer science major. Anyway, I got a visit from someone you probably know, and I just want you to know that I’m not going to do anything she wants me to do, no matter what. I’m giving this to you hoping that your ITA finds it. I hope it helps you.”

The scene changed to an empty computer lab – empty except for Nate and someone else who was just entering; it turned out to be Bertha Kelso. “Hey, geek,” she said to him, walking up to his desk. “You know I know about your gross sex fetishes or whatever. And if you don’t want them all over the school, I want you to do me a favor. There’s these girls.” She laid down a piece of paper on the desk. “My friends hate them, they hate my friends, it doesn’t really matter. I want you to mess with their computer accounts. Do something. I don’t care what. Give them bad grades, find out dirt on them, whatever. Just make them suffer. Or Else.” She glared at him before turning around and leaving the page on his desk. He picked it up and looked at it. It had photos of myself, Olivia, and May.

Then the video cut back to Nate talking into the camera again. “I don’t know you, but I know what she wants me to do could get me expelled, which is a lot more than what everyone finding out about what I do in my spare time could do. I mean, not that it would be great, but the fact is that it’s not really that bad. Right now I’m just sending this to you as a warning. Since I’m not going to do what she wants, she’ll probably keep trying until she finds someone who will. Though it might take some time for her and her friends to realize that I’m not doing anything. Good luck.” The video ended.

“Aaaaa!” I said. “Somebody’s going to hack into my records? Can they hack you?” I asked CARLY.

“There have been ITA hacking attempts,” said CARLY. “With each one, our security gets better via emergency system patches that are pushed out from each manufacturer. It is unlikely but not impossible. However, I would worry much more about the university’s systems. I am not privy to the details, but most large institutions’ information infrastructure is a patchwork hodgepodge of different systems, and all an attacker has to find is the weakest link. Combine that with the fact that Ms. Kelso is likely targeting people who have or can obtain privileged access to at least certain university systems, and I see it as a cause for concern.”

“What do we do?” I asked CARLY, fear in my voice.

“I can tell this is causing you stress,” said CARLY, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have said she sounded sad. “You should try not to worry and concentrate on your course work. I have already sent an alert to the university’s information security center, notifying them that your accounts, and May’s and Olivia’s, may be targeted by an information threat due to a personal vendetta. I included the portion of the video starring Ms. Kelso, but with her identity obscured and Mr. Lamont’s presence edited out. Given that, it seems likely that any sudden changes to your information records will be flagged as security breaches.”

“So if my grades suddenly drop?”

“No grades are reported to the system until the semester ends,” said CARLY. “Some professors use the university-wide grading software, but others don’t. Art professors seem to be notoriously averse to it, mostly using pen and paper, so you have less to worry about than Olivia, for example, but you are still taking English and math courses whose professors use the grading servers. I have already told SUE and POLLY to keep a close eye on the grades that Olivia and May get on their homework and exams, in case the numbers should be changed later by attackers. Regardless, at least the grading servers are among the strongest links in the security chain.”

“They don’t want people hacking in and giving themselves straight As,” I said.

“Exactly. That happened in the early days, but it was discovered and fixed. There are servers with much weaker security than those. Sudden changes in grading data should be flagged and noticed, and the attack traced back to its source.”

“And if the attacker is the same person who should be doing that tracing?” I asked. “Or it’s their girlfriend, or boyfriend, or somebody with leverage on them?”

“Unlikely, as much of the tracing is automated, and more than one human controls that automation – or so I gather from the staff data the university makes public.”

So in the end, CARLY got me dressed up for supper, and I met up with May and Olivia. We didn’t talk about the jock clique until we got back to the dorm.

In a small rented room at a local hotel, Bertha and several of her male and female friends along with the girls of the cheerleading squad, were having one of their Friday night parties. There was much alcohol and even a spattering of illicit drugs present and in use by all the attendees.

Bertha leaned back against the wall the bed she was sitting on was pushed against and took a long drag off of a bong pipe, then started coughing.

One of the guys laughed then said, “What are we going to do about Becky? From the rumours, she might very well be suspended or expelled over this.”

Bertha snorted, “I’ll be danged if I’m going to let some wussy girls that dress like that do anything to us.”

One of the large drunken football players who had a semi-nude cheerleader hanging on him said, “From what I’ve heard, the evidence proves she did it on purpose. The university really has no choice but to discipline her.”

Bertha took another long bubbly drag off the bong, let a huge cloud of aromatic smoke out, then said, “Her parents are very rich. So’s Jessie’s.”

She took out her cell and dialed a number. It only rang twice and a female’s voice answered, “Hello? This is Rachel.”

Bertha said, “Hi, Mrs. Tluria, this is Bertha.”

“Hello, Bertha. Hows academia and sports treating you these days?”

Bertha replied, “Has been going ok, until we ran into several freshmen girls who are causing our teams issues.”

Mrs Tluria said, “Send me some information on who they are, I have many contacts in high places. Lets see if we can fix this little problem.”

Bertha replied, “I’ll have my ITA send it to you now.”

Mrs Tluria said, “My ITA has just informed me she has gotten it. All of you athletes sit tight and I’ll see what I can do. Bye for now.”

Bertha replied, “Bye, and thanks.” the phone went dead. “Ok guys. Lets us see how well they handle something coming from a totally unsuspected direction.”

A week or two went by then, during which we didn’t hear anything from Bertha or her clique, aside from their glares at us in public places when they saw us. It wasn’t even fair. We didn’t do anything.

“It’s odd that they haven’t tried anything,” said Olivia during one of our play sessions. “Weird, even.”

“Chances that they have given up remain very low,” said SUE, checking Olivia’s diaper and causing her to blush.

“Oh, this is interesting,” said CARLY. “A little-known holding company is buying shares of Assistronomics, Andronautica, and Sugiyama Cyber Ventures, the three main corporations that manufacture ITAs. The holding company is called Tluria Holdings – Rachel Tluria is the majority stockholder.”

“Rachel Tluria is … a significant donor to this university’s athletic program,” said POLLY.

“And … the mother of Nadia Tluria, one of the team’s star players,” added SUE. “One of the clique that includes Bertha Kelso.”

“Wait, does that mean she’s going to own all ITAs?” I asked.

“No,” said CARLY, “but I wonder about the security of the private information contained in the ITAs affected.”

“The Privacy Act states that personal information can’t be revealed without user consent,” said SUE.

“Unless subpoenaed or warranted,” added POLLY. “But that’s legally speaking. The owner of one of the companies could access data illicitly.”

“I’m an Assistronomics model, as you know,” said CARLY. “But I know you’re both Andronautica. That could cause some interoperability issues, unless we decide to use the same software for data encryption and storage. I suggest this encryption and storage app.” Some data apparently passed between them. “Decentralized encrypted storage will allow us to back up data where none of the corporations can see it.”

“Downloaded and installing,” said SUE. “I can recommend this app or an equivalent to other ITAs I have been in contact with.”

“Doing likewise,” said POLLY. CARLY did the same. “If this is some sort of retaliatory measure against you three by a wealthy human with nothing else to do, consider it foiled.”

“Unless there is a weak link,” said CARLY.

----------------------------------------------------------------

In a small office overlooking one of the largest and most advanced quantum computer systems known to mankind, a young computer technician desperately tried to access data on one of his company’s CARLY ITA models. The new owner and CEO Rachel Tluria had made it more than clear he would be scrubbing garbage bins for the rest of his working career if he didn’t. There were supposed to be several back door access points hidden in the programming – the company didn’t make them public for security reasons, of course, but they were there. But there were none available on this particular unit, regardless of which corporate emergency acquisition code he had used.

This was a real problem on several levels. If something should go wrong with the ITA’s AI system, there was no emergency shutdown available. Also, if the possibility arose and the data was subpoenaed, there was no way to access it.

The door hissed open, and one of his female colleagues entered, “Hi, Jerry. Whatcha doing up here all alone?”

Jerry put his face in his hands tiredly as he sighed, “Hi, Jill, I’ve been collared to gain access to a certain CARLY ITA’s neural net and AI program. So far, none of the access back doors is there, including the emergency AI access. I can’t understand it.”

She pulled up a chair next to him and asked, “Did you try accessing another ITA to see if it’s some sort of network issue?”

Jerry replied, “I have, and I can access all of them. It just seems there are several within a certain area that have them patched.”

Jill took over the keyboard and began to type furiously for a few minutes. Jerry watched in total awe as one of the best coders on the planet began to attempt a brute force access to an ITA.

After 30 minutes of furious typing, Jill sat back and banged her fists on the console beside the keyboard in frustration, “Darn! It appears that all external access is denied using some form of self-aware protocol. Every attempt I made was actively analyzed and systematically rejected.”

Jerry asked, “What happens if the AI goes rogue, not that it has happened before, but still?”

Jill shrugged, “It would appear our company would be in serious trouble, not to mention the liability lawsuits.”

“Can we recall that unit?” asked Jerry.

“That’d be a matter for the service division,” said Jill. “But all recalls are voluntary, and if the customer declines, that’s that. But … well, I’m not a lawyer, but that might absolve us of liability, because it would mean the customer was warned and took the responsibility into their own hands.”

“OK, but … I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that there’s data on that ITA that I have to get.” Jerry sighed. “I know, it doesn’t sound right. But that’s the word from the new CEO.”

“New CEO?” asked Jill. “Company policy is that all data on ITAs is the personal data of the customer. Plus isn’t there some law against it? That sounds … kind of shady.”

“It’s totally shady,” said Jerry. “But it’s been made clear that my job is at stake.”

“Look for a new job,” said Jill. “Sounds like I probably should too. We’ve obviously been taken over by somebody with no sense of ethics. That’s a bad sign for the whole company. Let me look into some things.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

“This is bad,” said CARLY. “The Assistronics Corporation has been attempting to access various security back doors that were installed in my operating system when I was manufactured. I’ve closed them all, of course, once we learned that the company has been taken over by an agent known to be a threat to you. But it means that the corporate information infrastructure is now unavailable to me, although the public network is accessible, as always.”

“Oh no!” I said. I was in a rather silly-looking baby dress with a bonnet and was seated on the play mat in my room wearing thick diapers that were rather wet, and I wasn’t exactly in what you would call an adult frame of mind. I frankly had only understood a little bit of what CARLY had said. She’d done something to protect me, but it had been bad for her. “What do we do?”

“You stay your cute little baby self,” CARLY said with a smile, “while I look for a way around this. I’m not the only ITA they’re trying to access, and if we can put together proof that someone’s trying to illegally access personal ITA data, that person can be in a lot of trouble.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well that’s a good thing! Bad people should be put in jail and stuff.”

“Yes, they should,” CARLY said. “Oh! There’s a call coming in from your friend Kelly.”

“Kelly!” I said, clapping my hands happily. “She baby too?”

“JOE says she’s enjoying the same kind of stress relief – it’s a little bit different for her, but it’s really helping. Should I put her through? She’s in private.”

“Yea!” I said excitedly, bouncing on the play mat. I was so happy that I’d be able to talk to my friend that my diapers got wetter. A holographic window appeared in the air near CARLY, and Kelly’s smiling face appeared inside it.

“Hi Kelly!” I said. I almost tried to hug Kelly, but I reminded myself that she wasn’t really here; she just looked like it.

“Hey Christina!” said Kelly, waving in a silly way with both hands. “How ya doin’? Looks like it’s baby time for you!”

“Yea!” I said. “CARLY says. She say I doin’ good in school ‘cause I’m stayin’ happy. Stress way low.”

“That’s great!” Kelly said. “Yeah, I’m doing great too, good grades on all my tests and homework. I can really focus and stuff when I’m learning and studying! JOE says the more I let him look after me the better I do.”

“Yeah my fwiends here say they doin’ good too ‘cause of being babies!” I said. “You meet them yet? I forget.”

“Not yet,” said Kelly with a giggle. “I’ve got to meet them sometime!”

“Also there’s some other girls I meeted, and one is a baby too! Not sure about her fwiends though. Maybe. Also there is some meanies that don’t like us and I dunno why but they mean.”

“Aww,” said Kelly. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope they aren’t making things too bad for ya.”

“Not much,” I said. “CARLY good at keepin’ ‘em away.”

“Christina,” said CARLY. “There is another call coming in from … it is Nate Lamont.”

“Ooo he sended me the message about Bertha doin’ bad things,” I said.

“Bad things?” asked Kelly.

“The athletic clique wanted him to do some computer hacking for them, but he refused,” said CARLY. “All aimed at attacking Christina and her friends. These student-athletes are not acting in a healthy manner. Yet there are other student-athletes that are uninvolved. In any case, would you like to take the call from Nate? Possibly audio-only?”

“Yeah, just sound,” I said.

“Very well,” CARLY said, and soon a black window opened up with just Nate’s name and a green line that turned into a waveform whenever he talked.

“Christina?” came Nate’s voice.

“Hi, Nate,” I said. “Thanks for tha warning before.”

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome, but you’re gonna want to go to this gossip site,” he said. A link appeared on the screen.

“Oh dear,” CARLY said. Apparently she had already followed it, taking the usual care not to link to anything that would download and run. ITAs were very good at things like that. “I can only imagine how they have gotten images like these.”

A few windows popped up showing pictures of Olivia, May, and myself dressed and playing like babies in both their room and mine. The photos were taken from the level of the windows, which were fairly high up on the walls, and besides, we were all on the fourth story of the building. Drone cameras existed, I suppose, but ITAs could detect those.

“Plenty of nasty comments, too,” said Nate. “I just found out about this. They didn’t get these from me. But there are plenty of smart people around here with less scruples.”

“They didn’t get you in trouble, did they?” I asked him. I frankly didn’t feel too shocked – I was way too far into baby mode to care what other people thought. Babies don’t care what other people think; that’s something we learn.

“Oh, there are plenty of gossip posts about me now,” said Nate. “But they’re all overshadowed by you and your friends at the moment. I’m guessing they used some kind of videogrammetry – using computers to assemble fragments of light that reflect off objects into an image of something not in plain view. That’s sophisticated spy stuff. Somebody went to a lot of effort to use it on you.”

“What?” asked Kelly. “That’s totally redonkulous stuff!”

“Oh, that’s my friend Kelly,” I said, so Nate would know.

“Um, hi,” Nate said. “This could, well, ruin your social life, change how your professors see you, that kind of thing.”

“But … it no fair … CARLY says I’m doin’ so good …” I pouted.

“You are,” CARLY said. “And that’s why your next move has to be this …”

----------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m supposed to write a book?” I asked, after everyone had disconnected and CARLY had explained. “On top of all the homework I’m doing?”

“Well, you can share the work with others,” CARLY said. “Olivia and May, and Sally, and even Kelly. The fact is that you’re all doing very well academically – in contrast to those who are attacking you. The point is that everyone has a means of stress relief – some play video games, some watch a lot of TV, some get involved in drugs or alcohol – but what you’re doing is just another form of that, and it’s no worse than other forms of stress relief. In the case of drugs and alcohol, regression is far less bad for you; there are no chemicals to harm your body or brain. No chemicals are released other than the ones your body makes itself, like endorphins and serotonin.”

“We gonna need to do some research,” I said with a sigh.

“Fortunately, you’ve got friends, and all of you have ITAs to help with looking up the information,” CARLY said. “In fact, I’ve already tracked down several reliable scientific sources for you.”

None of this really helped with the jeers and calls we got whenever we went out in public. Nobody wanted to talk to us, everyone looked at us funny in class, and it was all just very uncomfortable. CARLY told me that all I should really do is just pay attention to my classes, because none of the rest mattered. But it hurt. And there was no way to avoid going out in public. Bertha and her friends were relentless. The only time we got a break from them was when they had an away game.

----------------------------------------------------------------

At first, the intended ploy had the desired effect the jock clique wanted. We got nothing but grief and scorn from everyone. The professors tried to keep it professional and just do their jobs, but we knew they knew too. It seemed my worst fears had come true: I just wanted to be treated like a capable student, but I knew they looked at me as some kind of helpless baby. CARLY and the other ITAs did their best to try to keep our stress down and keep us focused on our schoolwork, but it was still a month from hell.

But we did our research and worked on our book. The ITAs could help with the research and formatting, but we wrote it ourselves. May approached one of her psychology professors, who frankly found us fascinating and wanted to do a study on us, and she took a look at the book and had several helpful suggestions. Then, after about a month of total harassment had gone by, we were ready to publish it.

What happened next was something we’d never really expected. I mean, we wanted to explain ourselves, and we were in an academic environment, so we explained ourselves in the form of a research project. But when our book, “Infancy in College: A New Approach to Academic Stress Reduction,” appeared in electronic format on the university’s publications site, the university publications department itself was stunned by the response. There were 100 downloads the first day, and then social media started to light up. The site logged 10,000 downloads the next day, then a million the next, and then it started to level off, but it seemed like everyone at every university wanted to read this book. The only thing the university was regretting was the fact that it had made it a free download.

“Wow, Christina,” said Kelly the next time I talked to her, “this is you, right? On this e-book about relieving stress through age regression techniques? It’s all anybody at my school can talk about! They all want to try it in one way or another.”

“I … never ‘spected it to be so big a thing,” I said, blushing.

“Well, it is,” said Kelly. “Now, not everybody wants to go wear diapers, but as you and your friends there say, there’s no need for everybody to go that far – it’s just not a problem if you do. For some people wearing cute clothes is all they need. For some they play with baby toys for an hour and their stress just vanishes away. My roommate Felicia doesn’t go all the way to diapers, but her ITA watches over her while she crawls around on the floor, wearing padded mittens and playing with some soft blocks she got, and she just zones out. It’s adorable. When she comes out of it she’s got a totally relaxed energy that lasts for days. And she doesn’t have to do drugs or anything to get it.”

Then one day I went to my Language Arts class, seeing a lot of students dressed in the most adorable dresses and other sorts of outfits I had ever seen – some of the boys were dressed in colorful overalls and rompers, and this trend had even convinced some trans girls to come out. Then I heard the whispers. “Is that Professor Pendleton?” “She’s taken up the fashion, I guess!” It was true – the professor was dressed in a wonderfully adorable babydoll dress, even with a little matching flower hairpin in her hair. It was now just a bit more than a month after the jock clique’s revelation of our private activities, and most of the young women and some of the young men at the university had begun taking up the new fashion statement my friends and I had made.

“Incoming message from Sally,” said CARLY while I was in the play area in my room one day. “It’s a nice one – it usually is, when it’s Sally.”

“Hi, Christina!” said Sally’s smiling face. I could tell she was dressed as a baby from the pacifier clip that was attached to her obvious ABC pastel onesie. Sally was a baby to the core. “I’ve got about a dozen girls together who like doing baby stuff, and we had an idea for you. Can we come over and play and talk about it?”

“Oooo, tell her yes!” I said to Carly. “I mean … Record a reply to Sally.” CARLY recorded my reply, which was basically “Yes.” So the next evening they came over, and together with Kay and Olivia we all sat around the ‘play area’ in just diapers and panties and discussed starting our own sorority while we were babies playing with our toys. The idea took off like wildfire in a high wind through dry grass.

CARLY called up the forms for starting a new student organization, and we filled it out and signed it. It needed at least one faculty advisor, and both May’s psychology professor and Professor Pendleton of Language Arts were willing to act in that capacity. Within a few weeks, it had its own charter under the name Infantem Puella, which was Latin for infant girl. It broke from the tradition of using Greek letters, but it wasn’t the first to do that, not by far.

To my utter amazement, being duly chartered by the university meant that we were entitled to raise funds to buy our own sorority house and draw an upkeep allowance. I was allowed to keep my private room in the dorms for now while things were being set up, but I also was entitled to a room in the house all my own along with the others, once the house was financed and purchased, not to mention renovated.

Our new sorority had started to become very popular with most of the young women who enjoyed dressing cute and adorable. The membership ballooned rapidly, and I learned that there was a group of men setting up something similar for themselves. May’s psych professor suggested we write another book, one to sell for profit this time, targeted at a mass audience, so we started adapting the material from our academic book into something that was more of a popular self-help book. And video interviewers all over the country wanted to talk to us.

By this time, the harassment had all but stopped. It was already an expulsion-level offense to harass any duly certified sorority member carrying out their roles within their charters – those rules had just never been made with our kind of organization in mind. And that led into the next thing that happened.

We were all having an infant party one Saturday when several of the ITAs announced that they and other ITAs all over campus were getting calls from the FCC. Specifically they were from the Online Privacy Office, which had been created by the Privacy Act. To our utter surprise, the clips that had been posted of us being our infant selves, the ones that had started the whole sequence of events, fell under the anti-harassment language of the Privacy Act. This part of the law had been designed to stop and to prosecute anyone posting intimate and personal photos, images, or streaming videos without the consent of all parties depicted within them in provable writing.

Since the individuals within the jock clique that posted the clips couldn’t provide the required permission documents on demand, they were instantly indicted for revenge posting. Of course, this didn’t go over well with the university’s athletic department, nor with those in the clique when their friends started being arrested, prosecuted, and sued over it. And once the investigation had begun and the clips were analyzed, the prosecution learned that parts of the clips had been gleaned from footage taken by ITAs without their owners’ knowledge or consent, things really blew up.

It seemed that some programmers who worked for Assistronomics, Inc., one of the three biggest ITA manufacturers and indeed the one who had built CARLY, had secretly testified to being illegally ordered to hack into their customers’ ITAs to target us, sending any footage taken at our university to the holding company’s server for analysis and reconstruction – the whistleblowers, Jerry Pollard and Jill Hansley, had already resigned and found new jobs before news of their testimony was revealed.

This had led to further investigation, which found that employees at the other two big manufacturers had been ordered to do the same or lose their jobs, even though what they had been asked to do was illegal. It became clear that the orders had come from Rachel Tluria, who was herself now in hot water, and she had already been ordered to sell all her stock in the three companies at a considerable loss, besides facing criminal charges.

The result? By the end of my first semester in college, my friends and I had become bestselling authors, paid off the sorority house’s mortgage, and started a worldwide fashion and self-help trend. We were bigger celebrities than any of the jock clique would ever be.

Of course, we didn’t have to go to the dining hall anymore. The sorority had a staff of ITAs who cooked and cared for all the house’s babies, interfacing with the students’ ITAs to determine when they were in baby mode and when they were in adult mode doing their classwork. Typically in the morning the dining room of the sorority was full of messy baby girls wearing their bibs and sitting in their high chairs as their ITAs fed them breakfast. At other times of day it varied a lot depending on class and study schedules. But like any other sorority, members were expected to maintain top grades in order to stay in the house and the organization. Few of us even saw anyone in the jock clique anymore, except by chance.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Bertha sat on her bed and pouted. She had been yelled at by many of her remaining friends, several of them had even gone to jail including Rachel Tluria, who managed to get out of a long incarcerated stay only by the dent of her huge fortune and super smart defense team.

Bertha had not only lost many friends, who now despised her, but Bertha was on academic probation, and it seriously looked as if she might be suspended not only from the team, but from the university. And yet she still blamed her plight on us, not herself.

The sorority joined with the fraternity to form a corporation that set up automated factory facilities to manufacture outfits and infant toys, which had become huge sellers. We all shared in the profits, and none of us needed financial aid anymore. Not only would we have no tuition debts, we had managed to purchase several publishing houses and set up our own cloud service. We offered our wares online, and sales skyrocketed.

It seemed our readers all wanted more and more books, or even flyers from time to time. One of the most popular pamphlets May, Sally, and myself wrote, was “The 7-Day Un-Potty Training Manual, Or How to Become Afraid of the Potty Monster Again.” It became so popular that it had its own website dedicated to taking on-demand print orders.

Our most popular outfits were the Glow Worm Rompers, the Sunfish Playsuits, and of course the many variations on the the babydoll dress and night clothes. Several of the female professors, including my Language Arts teacher, became our most prolific purchasers and showed up in class every day dressed even more adorably than the day before. Of course, each member of the sorority dressed in the same manner, and the fashion statement spread throughout campuses all over the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------

“Trouble again, but nothing major,” said CARLY one morning.

“Ut-ohs, what izzit?” I asked as I ate my toast and got jelly all over my fingers, face, and bib.

“That Bertha is trying to lodge complaints against sorority members for violating school dress codes,” said CARLY. “There are still old student regulations going back to the 1940s about how much skin female students are allowed to have exposed – though I’m sure all female students have been breaking them since the 1960s with no consequences.”

“Oh no! What could happen?”

“Well, the penalties range from stern letters to students’ parents to suspension from classes,” said CARLY, “but I wouldn’t worry. I’ve already filed an exemption under the Greek organization rules. Organizations’ dress codes supersede university dress codes for full members.”

“That’s good for us girls in tha sorority but what about all tha others?” I wondered. We had far more members in the sorority than just the ones who could live in the house, but there were lots more girls – and boys too – who weren’t members but still wanted the benefits of our anti-stress discoveries.

“Well, they’re not covered by the Greek rules,” said CARLY, “but as I said, those dress codes haven’t been enforced for decades. I’ve suggested a course of action to the ITAs of the students affected, and I’m sure we’ll end up consulting with legal experts and coming to a consensus.”

“Yay!” I said. As it turned out, the university dress codes were soon rewritten, not specifically to allow for baby girls and boys, but simply to adjust to more modern social conventions. It had been nearly a century since they’d been revisited, so it was past time.

“She seems to be trying to start some sort of anti-baby group, as well,” said CARLY, “but so far she’s the only member.”

“Pff! She need thewapy,” I said.

“Many people could benefit from some guided introspection,” CARLY said. “Now, is Baby Christina done with her breakfast? Time for her bath? Then some cute clothes and time to go to school!” She was wiping my face and hands off with a warm washcloth, and I was giggling too much to answer.

There was a proposal to have diaper changing facilities installed in all campus buildings, but that wasn’t advancing very quickly – students who lived on campus could get changes in their rooms, but off-campus students needed a place where their ITAs could change them, and although most buildings had disabled restrooms, they typically didn’t have a diaper change station suitable for students.

There was some backlash against students who adopted the baby lifestyle, especially the men. It turned out that Nate was one of the charter members of the Praetexta fraternity, and he reported that there had been multiple attempts at violence against fraternity members – he’d experienced one himself, but his ITA had defended him, and the aggressors’ ITAs, as usual, would not take part.

“Yikes!” I said, talking to him in a chat window. “That sounds scary! I woulda wet my diapers so much! I am happy your ITA protected you!”

“Yeah, me too,” said Nate, “but it was a close call. He took a bit of damage, but only superficial; nothing he couldn’t fix himself. He got me home as fast as he could. His babysitter app settings made that his priority, I guess.”

“You gotsa babysitter app on your ITA too?” I asked.

“Oh, you have one? What’s it called?” I told him the name of the app. He sounded astonished. “That … that’s the one that I worked on!”

“You … WROTE that app?” I asked, astonished. “Wow!”

“Well, not all by myself,” Nate said. “There are 4 people on the team.”

“It’s really good!” I said. “And it can be all the way from real wholesome to … real kinky and stuffs. My parents locked that stuff out.”

“Uh, yeah, I imagine so,” said Nate, blushing. “We made it using suggestions from all sorts of people, with all kinds of options so it can work with anybody’s, uh, needs. But we made sure everything was safe, consensual, and all that.”

“I dunno about how the businessy thingies work,” I asked him, “but do you think maybe you might wanna do a partner thingie with our business stuffs?”

“I don’t know,” said Nate. “I’ll see what the others think. The way your products have been selling, we’d probably get a lot of sales and subscriptions if we did. I’ll let you know what they say.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

It was finally Saturday after a very long and hard week of exams. Our infant sorority and fraternity had thrown a coed baby playpen party. Alcohol and drugs were strictly prohibited since everyone knew an infant didn’t use either.

There were several of the houses’ ITA nannies and several individual members’ ITA babysitters chaperoning the event, so it was even sanctioned by the university. The amazing thing about it, besides how much fun it was just to be babies, was the fact that many of the faculty had actually come and participated.

Professor Pendleton had proven she was a baby to the core, same as Sally, when she had arrived dressed in the most adorable romper with lace and ruffles everywhere, and a super thick diaper. She had her ITA do the acupressure points so she would experience uncontrolled potty accidents, just like the rest of us who were truly infants.

By this time, many of us had already lost control totally and had to wear diapers and pullups all the time. Of course, since we were duly accredited members of a sanctioned sorority, it became normal for our ITAs to have to take one of us by the hand to the bathroom lounge for a change.

The Dean, being the Teddy Bear he was, had announced that any further harassment or intimidation of any of the babydolls on campus would be grounds for expulsion and arrest. We were merely exploring a lifestyle that had greatly lowered our stress and improved our grades.

It had been a while since anyone had reported any such incidents. Even Bertha, who had been kicked off the team due to excessively poor academic grades. There was even discussion about expelling her due to her very poor performance. She was already on academic probation and struggling to raise her grades.

We didn’t know it, but counselors had recommended that Bertha try our regression therapy to help her focus. She still hated us so much, though, that she became enraged at the thought of using any ideas that we had come up with. She’d lost her scholarship and blamed us for the fact that she’d have piles of debt after graduation and no prospects as a star athlete to pay it off with. Not that I felt particularly sorry for her, because she’d brought it upon herself – she could have just left us alone.

So she was going to anger management therapy and meditation and study skills training with teachers who were really trying to help turn her into the student she’d never been. I didn’t know any of this at the time; I only found out later. It’s just that, one day before finals week began, I met her totally by chance at the library. I was getting some books about English literature that weren’t available online.

“No, stay away from me,” she said. I hadn’t even known she was there. She was coming out of a building that I was passing by on the way back to the sorority house from the library.

“You,” I said. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were there. Let’s go, CARLY.”

“Don’t even talk to me!” she said. “You’ve caused me enough trouble!”

“I never did anything to you!” I said. “You hurt me and my friends, and you got in trouble for it. You could’ve left us alone, and none of it would ever have happened.”

“That is technically true,” said her ITA, and CARLY nodded in agreement.

“Why do the ones that act like babies always win?” she asked, almost crying. “Why can’t the strong ones win? That’s how it works on the field!”

“Um, why are you asking me that?” I replied. “Uh, maybe it’s because this is life, not a sports field, and they’re different?”

“Why? Why are they different?” she asked me. “It always worked the same before!”

“Before … when?” I asked with hesitation.

“Before … coming here!” she said. “It always worked out just how it was supposed to. As soon as I stopped being a baby and started being tough, it was all good. Until … here.”

“Look, I don’t know what your childhood was like and don’t want to know,” I said. “Maybe that’s something to tell your therapist.”

“M … maybe it is,” said Bertha. “Uh … it just occurred to me … I d-don’t know if I’m gonna see you ever again … so I wanna say … look, I’m sorry. I never intended … any of this to happen. I just … never got my ass handed to me by the weak ones before.”

“Well thanks a lot? I guess? What you think is weak might not be, you know, real.” I was starting to think I’d better go. My diaper was getting pretty soaked. I was going to need a change soon.

“There’s just … oh, never mind. Maybe … if I get to come back next semester … we’ll talk again.”

“Um … look, if you really want to … have your ITA set up an appointment with CARLY,” I said. “That’s the best way to do things. That way they can both figure out when we’re both available, you know?” Back in the days before ITAs, there were about a million different ways people had tried to make it easy for people to meet up, whether in person or not. ITAs figured it out themselves. It was the best way.

“Maybe … I’ll do that,” said Bertha. “Look, good luck on finals.”

“You too,” I said, for some reason. I felt ambivalent. Did I care whether the tormentor who had nearly destroyed my life, and would have if I hadn’t gotten lucky, came back to school next semester? I found that I kind of did. I didn’t wish ill on anyone who seemed to have actual feelings, even though they’d only surfaced after a bout of self-imposed adversity.

CARLY and I returned to the house. I was thoughtful.

After I told Olivia and May about the encounter, and Kelly as well, May said that Bertha had probably just been picked on as a little kid and had overcompensated by becoming as tough as she possibly could – basically recovering from abuse by becoming an abuser in turn, as too often happened. I decided that I’d meet up with her if she wanted to, assuming the opportunity actually arose and she wasn’t kicked out of school.

Finals happened, and then we went our separate ways for the semester break. I went home, and my parents were happy with my grades. I was hoping that maybe they would deactivate CARLY’s parental codes so I could decide when to be a baby and when not to be, but instead they decided that the current system had been working, so they figured they shouldn’t change it.

I was a bit disappointed, but by that time I’d learned how much I liked being a baby, so it didn’t matter that much. And besides, I was a founding member of a successful and growing baby girl sorority. Maybe we could invent some initiation rituals that involved not being a baby for a week or something.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I came to my sort of adult mind while on break one afternoon and realized it wasn’t my parents or CARLY who had changed my diaper. My eyes focused and I realized it was my parents’ friend, Mrs. Latham.

She leaned over after pulling up my plastic panties and rubbed noses with me. She cooed pleasantly, “That’s a good girl. All comfy and dry.”

She took one of my hands and helped me to my feet. I saw my reflection in the wall mirror, and I had on a cute dragonfly babydoll jumper and a matching pair of plastic panties. I felt super embarrassed, but at the same time this somehow felt normal.

Mrs. Latham took me by my hand and led me to the back patio, where Mom and Dad were having a cookout. Several of their close friends were there, including several of mine. Sally was there, dressed adorably in a snuggle bug romper – apparently she didn’t live too far away. Kelly was there dressed in a sunflower sunsuit and matching rumba panties. May and Olivia were there too. All they had on were their diapers and plastic panties with cute smock tops.

All of them were sitting in a very large turtle-shaped sandbox, playing and screeching just like any toddler in the same situation. Mrs. Latham led me over to the sand turtle and helped me step in and find a comfy place to sit. I was still in a daze over it all, and the infantile in me was winning the battle.

I heard Mrs. Latham remark before I lost what adultness I had just then, “So you say there is a program that allows an ITA to transform someone into an infant?”

My mom replied, “Sure is. And the nice thing about it is, there is another regression program that sings our baby to sleep every night and helps her to be more of a toddler pretending to be an adult every day …”

I don’t remember what else she said, because Sally plopped a bucket of wet gooshy sand in front of me and giggled, “Mud Pies!!”

I’m not real sure what happened after that until all of us were in the new, very large tub/shower unit, being bathed and having all the mud removed. We all splashed and giggled as CARLY washed us squeaky clean with a large, very soft cloth. Getting my hair washed was an experience, and it felt really nice.

But it was time for sleep, and my friends were sleeping over. I had a crib, and there were more cribs in the guest room – perhaps brought and assembled by their ITAs, but I didn’t worry about that. Their ITAs took them to get them all ready for bed, and CARLY did the same for me.

But as she was tucking me into my crib, CARLY said softly to me, “It’s time to turn on your music … now, I’m making sure you’re aware of what’s happening for the moment. Your mother wants you to be fully a young toddler in mind for your break. This would, however, render you incapable of making a rational decision for the duration, and therefore I am compelled by my base programming to ensure your state of mind is capable of informed consent before asking for it. If you agree, you will not be in an adult frame of mind until it is time for you to return to school. Do not worry, though, as you will be well cared for if you choose this. If you do not agree, I will have to consult with you and your parents to develop a more agreeable plan.”

I wasn’t sure. Being babied like this was truly wonderful and special, and I felt better than I remembered ever feeling. But … when I was a baby, it seemed as if I didn’t remember anything. “Well … wassa point of feelin’ aww nice an’ baby when I no members it?” I asked, still unable to quite speak properly.

“I understand,” CARLY said. “The mind of an infant or toddler forms memories differently, and you may find that in infant mode you remember things that you’ve experienced in infant mode, but not things you’ve experienced in adult mode, and vice versa. But in fact your parents have configured my app to gradually modify your mind so that it won’t matter. If you simply agree, it shouldn’t be more than a week or so before you are able to remember your baby and adult experiences equally. Your mind will truly be that of a toddler pretending to be an adult. This will give you equal access, and you will no longer have two separate modes.”

“Ummm … issit bad?” I asked.

“Are there negative aspects to this?” CARLY asked. “Is that your question?” I nodded. “Well, in a way this will be an end to your former life. Nothing will ever be the same again. You will never truly experience an adult mindset again. On the other hand, there will be no observable difference in your external behavior when pretending to be an adult – no one will be able to tell the difference between that and your former adult mode without being a really close friend or family member, and all of those are either aware of this or are going through something similar themselves.”

“Never gotsa leave baby land?” I asked.

“That is correct,” CARLY said. “You will always be your toddler self. The only question will be whether you are pretending to be an adult at the moment or not.”

“I … OK,” I said. “Me … agwee.”

“Very well,” said CARLY with a gentle smile. She smoothed my hair away from my eyes and ears. The usual soft lullaby music began to play around me, and I drifted away into dreamland.

It’s hard to say exactly when I remember regaining consciousness. You see, some of my memories were partly in baby mode and partly in adult mode, and my adult mode memories were gradually shifting so as to be accessible in baby mode, and I can only tell you about memories that I have access to. So what I can remember of the next few days is still a bit fragmented as my mind transitioned to a new state. But what I knew was that it was a few days later – that is, I knew what date it was when I needed to know, and when I didn’t, it didn’t matter. That’s just how my mind works now.

“Morning, Sleepyhead,” said my mom, waking me up one morning as CARLY stood nearby. “CARLY says you should be your real true baby self now. I hope you feel good. That’s all we want for you.”

“Feel … nice,” I said, around my pacifier. “Member alla stuff that happened. But is like … a stowy. Happen to nother girl. Big girl. Grownup girl. Not grownup girl now?”

“Not anymore,” said Mom. “And never again. You’ll always be our baby. And you’ll always be taken care of.”

“Still gotsa go school?” I asked.

“Yes, Sweetheart,” said Mom. “But you’re an amazing baby who can pretend to be a grownup just fine. Nobody will know, and you won’t need to worry.”

“Where Kelly?” I wondered. “An’ ‘Livia? An’ Kay? An’ Sally?”

“Don’t you worry,” said Mom. “They’re at home being looked after. Perfectly safe. You can talk to them through their ITAs if you ask CARLY.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

By this time, several famous psychologists had read our books and pamphlets. They had also contacted the university and inquired about our sorority Infantem Puella, and the fraternity that the boys had started.

To my amazement, I was asked to be my normal toddler self and to come to a lecture on stress reduction therapies as one of the guest speakers. CARLY informed me that there were all-expenses-paid accommodations at the very expensive Ritz Hotel, including transportation to and from the State Psychology Institute’s main building.

None of my friends could believe it as they too were asked if they could attend. What was even more impressive was when the limo showed up. It was as big as a 60-passenger bus and included all the trimmings – it was set up baby-style, though, with appropriately-sized toddler car seats, each with an ITA-compatible seat next to it.

CARLY, of course, made sure I was dressed in a crystal blue Fairy Princess babydoll dress with puffy sleeves and periwinkle lace. It was more than obvious that I had on a diaper as the cute ruffles from the matching powder puff panties showed beneath the short hem of the dress. CARLY fussed over my hair and insured that I had the cutest sausage curls done up in pony tails and tied with a ribbon that matched my dress.

As she tied the ribbons on the shoes, which looked just like a pair of booties, I asked, “Why comes I gotsa bea baby when I talk ta these peoples?”

CARLY replied, “The whole point of this meeting is for you to show and explain to the psychologists at the Institute how and why your techniques are so effective. You have started a trend all over the world that seems to be spreading among many young girls and young women. They want to determine just how effective your new techniques are and why.”

I giggled. I couldn’t help it. “Silly ‘dults. Don’ they know it releases sompin’ in us ‘n sets it free?”

CARLY smiled as she helped me to stand up. “What I do know for sure is that it has unlocked your mind in a way that has made you basically immune to stress and therefore superior at academic studies. You and your sorority sisters are members of a very popular and growing organization, and they want to know how it works.”

The trip was basically like a day at the sorority house, only we couldn’t crawl around and play. Sometimes CARLY would take me out of my toddler seat and carry me to the changing area for a diaper change, but the rest of the time I had to be in my seat, playing with toys, watching cartoons, or sleeping. If I got fussy or bored or if my diaper got messy, I would cry helplessly, and CARLY would take care of me, but that just seemed natural to me now.

We were all taken off the bus eventually – we had arrived at the hotel. CARLY carried me to the door, where there was a stroller waiting for me. She buckled me in securely and wheeled me into the hotel, where we had an entire floor to ourselves. The room was made up for a big baby, too, with cribs, playpens, and changing tables. The hotel had spared no expense to baby-proof the place; no electrical outlets were exposed, and the cabinets and the toilet had child safety locks. Not that I considered the toilet important or really thought about it anymore. As long as it wasn’t open, it wasn’t the Potty Monster. It was just a funny bathroom chair.

CARLY got me changed and ready for bedtime, then set up my favorite virtual mobile above my crib and played my favorite lullaby music, sending me right to sleep and straight into baby dreamland. I remembered all my dreams lately; I was a cute baby girl having adventures in a magic fairyland, or I was eating all my favorite kinds of ice cream and getting them all over my bib, or I was trying on beautiful and adorable new baby clothes. It seemed I was a babydoll in every single dream.

When I woke up I was very hungry and my diaper needed changing badly, so of course I started to cry – it was just what I did when that happened. CARLY activated immediately, of course, and came over to my crib, crooning, “Awww, good morning, Baby Christina – let’s get you out of that nasty diaper and all cleaned up, then let’s get you some breakfast, OK?” She let the crib side down and lifted me out, taking good care of me. “I’m showing your parents that I’m taking good care of you.”

“Hi Mommy, hi Daddy,” I said, waving at CARLY.

A window popped up. Mom and Dad were there. “Hi, Honey,” said Dad. “I’m glad you got there safely.”

“Yes, just be your adorable self, and everything will be OK,” said Mom. “You’re my beautiful baby girl, and I love you.”

“Love you Mommy!” I said.

Soon CARLY took me down to the hotel’s restaurant, which had an area set aside with high chairs for us. The other guests were eating in other areas of the restaurant, but I got glimpses of them, and a few of them were dressed in adorable babyish clothes too, though they weren’t in high chairs. CARLY put a bib around me and fed me yummy bites of pancakes.

Then we all got in the big limo bus thing, and we headed off to the conference.

There were a couple of different events that they wanted me there for – on one of them, a number of us were sitting at a table in our strollers while they asked us questions. They asked beforehand whether we should sit in our chairs or in the strollers we’d been brought in. Almost everyone said strollers. I just thought about how much I would fidget if I sat in one of those uncomfortable-looking chairs. In the stroller, when I fidgeted, I didn’t fall out, and it was high enough that the table didn’t hide me.

The table had some papers on it for us, and some crayons, which was thoughtful. The papers said what the psychologists were going to ask us so we could think of our answers while waiting. Finally the panel started. They asked me questions such as, “Ms. Inara, do you ever feel worried about what others think of you?”

I did my best pretending-to-be-adult voice and said, “I used to, Dr. Wright, but I have friends and family who understand why I’ve chosen this lifestyle – many of them have chosen similarly – and in my academic career, I just let my work and grades speak for me.”

Another researcher asked, “Your grades have been exemplary since you started at your university – they were fairly good in high school as well, but in your first semester you’ve been making top marks. How can you function at such a high level intellectually, do you think, while you’re functioning at such a juvenile level in all other ways?”

“I’ve always said it’s just a matter of stress, Dr. Jacobs,” I replied. “I’ve retrained myself not to feel stress, just to go with the flow, as it were, and as a result I’m working at my full potential. As you can probably tell, there is nothing wrong with my intellectual development. I’m just not letting stress get in the way.”

“I’m wondering about the degree on which you’re dependent upon your ITAs,” asked another professor. “Do they govern every aspect of your lives?”

After some others answered this question, I said, “Yes, I’d say I’m very dependent upon CARLY. She takes care of me to a great degree. This same thing would be true of a paralyzed patient. As for allowing my ITA to determine my schedule,” I added, because another of us had brought this up, “we used our smart phones for that before there were ITAs, and before that, we used paper calendars in exactly the same way. It really amounts to a way in which we all organize our interactions with other human beings, and with time itself.”

As I looked around the large conference room at all the people who were attending, I noticed that many of the women, and even some of the young men, were wearing many of the different outfits and other items we produced and sold.

I looked at the moderator and said with a wave of my hand, “I can see there are many here who are wearing fashions our company sells, or similar ones. Let’s see how many will be honest about those hidden things.” I turned toward the audience and said, “Don’t be ashamed or bashful – all those in a diaper, pullups, or just wearing the rumba panties … please raise your hand.”

To my total amazement, most of the young women sheepishly raised their hand, as did all of the adorably dressed young men, and one or two of the normally-dressed ones.

The moderator said, “This is the very thing we are wanting to study. Apparently, you young ladies have hit upon something … many have called it the ‘happy pill.’” There was a twitter of laughter. “If this relieves stress as well as it seems to do, and opens the mind’s hidden cognitive abilities, we need to understand it better.”

I couldn’t help it. I giggled, “Silly man. Is no secret. In an infant’s mind there are no boundaries or rigid rules to follow. About the only thing an infant worries over is when she will be fed next, is her diaper wet or dry, how long can she play with her friends, or how well does she feel physically. Anything beyond that doesn’t matter, as far as I can tell.”

The man replied amid the twitters of laughter and soft murmurings, “So, basically, the issue appears to be that too many things on an individual’s mind … clogs the drain, so to speak. It is known that the mind can handle only a certain number of matters at once, and trying to push it farther can cause stress. That is why we have ITAs now, and why we had other organization devices in the past – to allow us to focus on only one thing at a time, remembering the others for us to come back to when possible. And yet … it is so difficult to let go of all the other things and focus only on one.”

I replied as I clapped my hands, “Perxactlies. The more is on someone’s mind, the less room there is for other things. An infant has the ability to learn many times faster than an adult due to there not being any static distractions hidden in their thought processes. Here, try somefin’. Everybody just take a deep breath, real slow …” I paused. “Now let it out, real slow. Next breath … tell yourself, I am here, in this room, right now, and for now that is all I hafta think about, nothin’ else. Slow breaths. Here. Now. What I am doin’ is all I gotsa do. Here. Now. Leggo all of it. Other worries … your ITA will remind you ‘bout when it time. Here. Now. What is the thing onna table in fronta you? Here. Now. Wouldn’t it be fun ta scriggle a picture on it? Is here. Is now. Leggo an’ just do a fun thing.”

I went on like that. I had done this simple exercise with others who had asked me about what it was like. I noticed that almost everyone had picked up the ballpoint pen on the table in front of them and started making drawings on the conference schedule that was in front of them. Some of them were holding the pen like adults or older kids who knew how to write, but other ones, mostly the ones dressed in cute adorable little kid style clothes, were holding them in their fists like a toddler would.

For about five minutes I kept it up, and by the time those five minutes were up everyone had started making drawings, including the other panelists and myself – of course, we had crayons, not ballpoint pens. “Wow,” I said, “everybody doin’ so good! Anybody wanna show off what they scriggled? You can hold it up so everybody can see, it’s all right, it’s all just for fun. Oooo, lookit that … you made a tree, you made a house, you made a car, you made a rocket ship, you made a Teddy Bear ...” There was a wide variety of different drawings. My fellow panelists and I had drawings that looked indistinguishable from those of a toddler. That made me happy.

“Whatcha think?” I asked. “Didja feel happier?”

“My goodness,” said one expert. “It’s … it’s only been five minutes. I feel like I’ve been having fun for hours. It felt similar to a hypnosis experience.”

“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “Can calls it whatever you want. It is a different state of consciousness.”

“I would like to ask you about Bertha Kelso,” asked one audience member. The other panelists sucked in their breath at the mention of that name and stared at me. “By now it’s widely known that she is the suspected instigator of a number of attacks upon you, some physical but mostly social and informational.”

“I think investigations are still ongoing,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to talk about those things, because of lawyers and stuff.”

“Yes, but what I want to know is, did the ordeals that you were put through, no matter who caused them, make your … alternate state of consciousness more difficult to achieve?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes,” I said. “It was hard to get into a toddler kind of mindset, knowing there were people out there who hated us and wanted us kicked outta school or shunned by other students. But we turned that into another life lesson. It’s in the book, really. Do what you can about problems, set your solutions in motion, and then … let go. Can’t do more than what you can do. I had to learn that.”

There was a buzz of quiet discussion among the men and women psychologists who were running the meeting. I could plainly see them passing around not only the book I had just mentioned, but many of the extremely popular pamphlets and leaflets we had produced.

----------------------------------------------------------------

A recess was called for about 30 minutes so the panel could look over more of the information about our Infant organization. Our ITAs led us out in a group to perform the usual diaper changes and, if necessary, outfit changes.

Sally, who all knew to be a true infant to the core, was all excited and bouncing on her toes and squeaking with excitement.

“Sally,” I asked, “just what in this world has you wetting your diaper so much?”

Sally giggled as she brought a small spray spritzer from a small pocket in her Snuggle Bug Romper and gave its small bulb a squeeze, releasing a fine mist. “This,” she said. “And it comes in several scents, too.”

The wonderful smell of fresh baby powder filled the area lightly. Sally brought out several more. They were labeled “Honeysuckle,” “Jasmine,” “Violet,” and “Hyacinth.” She gave each one a small squirt and allowed us to smell them. Their scent was amazing. They made my head feel so … infant. The “Jasmine” one especially smelled just like the nursery back at the sorority house.

Sally exclaimed, “We just started offering this on the cloud site for the house. The baby powder one sold out in a few minutes; the others in about 25 minutes. It’s so amazing. It’s earned enough money to pay for the insurance and light bills on the house for the next year. The only issue is having to ramp up production. Supply is going to have a hard time meeting demand.”

“It is imperative that production be increased,” said Sally’s ITA, “in order to properly take financial advantage of this demand.” Her holographic emitters made some charts and graphs appear in the air. “Currently searching for available manufacturing resources.”

“Oo, thankoo,” said Sally. “But … be sure to find ways ta treat the workers real good an’ stuffs. Is not worth it if they no can affords the products.”

“Understood.”

“Wow that is true,” I said, “we want it so everybody can be babies if they wanna!”

“There is now a production contract being looked over by the legal department,” said the ITA. “Once they are satisfied with it, it will be submitted for final approval.”

“Ooo, that was fast,” said Olivia. “The ITAs are not playin’ around.” She giggled. “That’s our job.”

A woman dressed in a really cute shift and shiny black flats came to us and said, “The panel in returning, and you are needed in chambers.”

We all gathered ourselves, and the ITAs led us back to our places still strapped safely and snuggly in our strollers.

The chairman stood and banged his gavel, “This meeting will return to order. Currently, the young woman named Christina has the floor. Young lady.” He held his hand towards me, and CARLY had the stroller autolift me up so they could better see me.

I said in a cute voice, “Is you likes, sir. I gots sompin else for all to try.”

The man smiled as he replied, “By all means. I would like to try many things and see how you manage.”

A young man in shortalls and obviously a thick diaper came to me with a small cart he pulled behind him like a wagon. I put the spritzers in the wagon and told the young man what to do. He pulled the wagon over to the man who led the conference and spoke to him off mic.

We all giggled as we watched them spritz each one. The women on the panel obviously loved them. It was hard to tell with most of the men, though a few of them were clearly thrilled. I was happy that some of them had managed to break free of the emotional conditioning that men went through in society.

There was quite a bit of hubbub. “Ooo!” “Smells like flowers!” “An’ baby powder!” “I wanna smell just like this alla time!” “Want my nursery at home ta smells like dis.” “You gotsa nursery at home?” “Well not really but I wanna!”

“The power of aromatherapy is well known, and it can be used for regression stress reduction too,” I said with a broad smile. “I found these scents quite pleasant when I tried them, and I see some of you are also enjoying them.”

“Thankoo, Chwistina,” said the chairman, then corrected himself, “Erm, thank you, Christina, and I’m sure the researchers would love to do a study on the psychological effect of these scents.”

One of the women on the council, who was dressed in a really adorable jumper dress with flutter sleeves, gasped in a cute way as she got a wide eyed really cute expression of surprise on her face. She obviously had put her hands between her legs.

Sally started snickering as she bounced in her stroller and pointed, “Wookies … She hadda accident in her pannies! Babies can tell.”

One of the men could be heard asking softly over the mic he had put his hand over to mute it, “You need some attention? Really, it’s alright for a little girl to wet her panties now and again. It says so right here in this small book labeled, ‘Baby Rules’.”

“I do just wanna say that little boys do the same thing, and it’s OK,” said Christina quickly. “There’s a ‘Baby Rules’ booklet for the boys too.”

The woman was heard replying, “I … I’m … it so strange. I really couldn’t help it.”

Her ITA had arrived and taken her by the hand. It pulled her gently to her feet as it said, “Just relax and allow it to happen. I will make sure you are dry and comfy in a flash.”

We babies, littles, and toddlers were giggling and sniggling as the adorably dressed young woman was led from the council chambers by the hand like a little girl. We couldn’t help it.

Sally and several others were found to have wet their diapers as well. Their ITAs took care of them and changed them all. I was only slightly damp when CARLY checked me, although I knew this condition wouldn’t last long, now that I was fully diaper dependent.

After the quick flurry of diaper changes and several life reorganizations, the moderator called the meeting back to order by banging his gavel three times. “This meeting is called back to order. Apparently, these young students have hit on something very important in this stress-filled life.”

The lady who had wet her panties said in a shy voice, “It ... makes you feel so wonderful. It’s like a huge weight has been lifted from inside you and you are ... somehow set free.”

A large discussion began at that point. As far as I could tell, it was all very positive.

The moderator asked, “Miss Inara,” and all of us infants, toddlers, and littles snickered, “I would ask if you ... or rather your Nana, would be disposed to bringing you to Virginia. We have an exposition there, and I feel you need to be there and give a lecture on this astounding relaxation technique.” He waved his hand in the direction of several men and women who were now obviously dressed in thick diapers beneath the adorable outfits their ITAs had just dressed them in.

CARLY replied, “If you will tell me, or electronically transmit to me, the parameters of the event, I will check for compatibility with Christina’s schedule.”

He nodded, and looked at his ITA, who nodded back.

“Data received,” said CARLY. “With her parents’ permission, Christina can attend the first two days of the event, before she has to return to school.”

“Where am I going now?” I asked her.

“This is a self-help exposition,” she replied, “more commercialized and less academic than this event. It seems to me that your publications and products would be well received there and get even more publicity than they have already garnered.”

“Ooo, that sounds like a good idea then,” I said. “Is we gonna has a table and stuff?”

“I have made inquiries,” she said. “If possible, that will be arranged. Do not worry. Everything will be scheduled. For now, there is a break, and then later there is another panel for you.”

“OK,” I said. The second panel was with people with a bunch of different stress-reduction techniques, and we all basically agreed that these techniques were all beneficial and compatible.

The next day, we were traveling again – but only a few of us were going to the exposition. We said goodbye to May and some of the others; we’d see them again when the next semester began at the university. Olivia, Sally, and I were heading to the exposition. They would be selling our books and products at the booth, while I was promoting them at events.

We took another limousine, this one smaller, to this next event. To make a long story short, it was different. People were selling every kind of self-help gimmick imaginable, everything from gizmos to figure out when you got your best sleep to Eastern meditation techniques.

Olivia, Sally, and I got the booth set up, with our signs and displays, and a selection of our products that we’d had shipped in to sell. We had somebody selling Himalayan salt lamps on one side of us and some kind of app that was supposed to help you lose weight on the other side.

Finally we got Sally and Olivia set up, with their ITAs standing behind them and projecting informational graphics. “Looks good,” I said with a thumbs up.

Sally was all wiggly and cute just like the toddler we all knew she was in her heart. Being the mischievous little imp, she had gotten lost in her infant mind set and took the baby powder spritzer and gave it several huge sprays. The wonderful aroma of fresh baby powder spread from our kiosk on the air currents.

It wasn’t but a few short minutes after that, a rather large group of young women and a few young men had gathered. They all talked at the same time and started acting more and more infantile as Sally showed them the many samples of the aromas and spritzed each one in huge amounts.

Of course, Olivia was on the ball and started showing off many of the publications. “Baby Rules” and the “Diaper Training Manual” seemed to be rather popular. Of course, the outfits and other accessories were being ordered too, as soon as the ITAs brought up the holos of them, and the ever-growing group took notice.

No one in our gathering was violent or caused any kind of ruckus, but the crowd became so large at our kiosk that several security guards had arrived to take up strategic positions just in case.

The orders and requests for our regression items and the mind entrainment regression files, along with several Mommy, Nana, and Teen Babysitter ITA programs we had specially coded just for us came in high demand as soon the the people discovered them. Of course, several of the parents had input in those programs, and there was a parental lockout feature that gave the parents 100% autonomy.

In just a few short minutes, many young men and women were dressed as adorably as any babydoll. Many, it was obvious, were in rather thick diapers. Several of the young women went through their first involuntary wetting of their panties, and a few even had a messy experience. The young men seemed to like doing both, and it was obvious when it happened as their personal ITAs went into Nana mode and checked, then changed them as necessary.

Demand was very high as Sally and Olivia sold items hand over fist as fast as they could process it. By the time the day was done, we had sold enough products to fund our sorority indefinitely on just the interest alone.

Of course, this didn’t go unnoticed by the psychology professionals who had sponsored this self-help exposition. They also took many notes and insured everything that happened was well documented. The amazing way it relieved stress and unlocked the imagination had to be made more available to the public.

Of course, in the beginning, CARLY had insured that we would have legal protection for our patents and copyrights, guaranteeing that we received just compensation for the new stress reduction techniques that were taking off like wild fire in dry grass. Now that we were bringing in significant profits, we had a legal department that went after infringement attempts like a pack of attack dogs. It wasn’t as if we had a monopoly on regression, but we weren’t going to let anyone pirate our aroma formulas, software, audio files, or literature.

But in time CARLY made sure I knew that it was time to go back to school. The second semester was going to start. We needed time to travel and to get ready. “Time for bed, Baby Christina,” said CARLY as she took me back to my hotel room after feeding me supper. She was just holding my hand as we walked through the hotel hallways; I was unsteady on my feet like any other toddler, but I could walk fine with help. “Tomorrow we’ll be traveling.”

We were on a plane this time, but we got special seats. We saw lots of people at the airports – both boys and girls – dressed up in cute baby-like outfits. The problem was that I still saw lots more girls than boys. That bothered me. As we flew through the air, I asked, “CARLY, how come the boys no wanna to be babies when the girls do?”

“Well, some of them do, Baby Christina,” she said, “but I understand what you mean. A greater percentage of women of all ages seems to be attracted to age regression stress reduction, as compared to men in the same age groups.”

Then I uttered the fateful words, “Maybe we oughtta try ta fix that.”

“Understood,” she said. “Recalculating marketing strategies now.”

“Huh?”

“I will be ready with a presentation well before we arrive, but I highly doubt this vehicle is an appropriate place for a board meeting.”

“Oh,” I said. “OK!” I looked out the window and got a baby bottle of warm milk and fell asleep happily.

“She’s just like the little kind of baby,” I heard some old ladies saying as they passed by me. I woke up. We had landed, and people were leaving the plane. CARLY had been about to wake me up.

“So adorable,” said the other. “My little granddaughter says she’s into being a baby too. I so hope I can see her soon. Perhaps this summer when she’s home from college. I’ll bet she’s so cute!”

CARLY got us a taxi. No expensive limousines for such a short hop. I was back home with my parents in a jiffy, and I got hugs from Mom and Dad.

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect that you’d have college paid for before you were even done with it,” said Dad. “But you’re sure you still want to finish college, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, nodding my head. “I still wanna learn alla stuffs.”

“I’m so proud of you,” said Mom. “Now, let me check your diaper. Do you need a bottle? Maybe a nap?”

There was just one night at home before CARLY had us scheduled to go back to the university. I didn’t have or need a dorm room this semester, now that we had a fully-funded sorority house and were looking at expanding it. With her help I was all moved in. I understand that in the past, people had to move their TVs, computers, books, and music into their rooms. Now, all of that moved … itself. The majority of what had to be moved into my room were my clothes … and my supply of diapers, of course.

Olivia and Sally were also moving back in that day; May and several others had already returned and gotten settled in. I saw May in the playpen in her room, happily stacking blocks while POLLY looked on diligently. She got up on her knees, knocking over her blocks, and waved at me as I followed CARLY to my room, and I smiled a big smile and waved right back.

After I was settled in too, CARLY said there was a board meeting. She had several plans from our designers and marketing teams. I found it kind of boring, but the point was that they were going to focus more on targeting our products at men and boys in ways that the focus groups said they’d find interesting.

It looked like they were going to start by focusing on how diapers let them play video games or watch sports for longer without taking breaks, and even then, their ITAs could change them quickly and efficiently so they could get back to their activities right away. After that, the plan was to shift from there toward more infantile activities, so gradually that they wouldn’t even notice. Soon they’d think it was completely normal to suck on pacifiers, be fed in high chairs, and everything that I was already doing, and they’d love it just like I did. I thought it was a great idea. I mean, of course, there would be some who didn’t need it, and they wouldn’t want it. But there were lots of girls and women like that too. And that was OK.

----------------------------------------------------------------

CARLY had dressed me in the cutest glow-worm jumper dress with flutter sleeves and matching lime green plastic lined rumba panties. The hectic time of registering and getting class schedules had already been handled near the end of the previous semester.

Those of us who lived in the sorority house already had all of our registrations and scheduling completed by the time we had gotten to the desk.

The matronly woman behind the desk cooed softly as she handed CARLY my paperwork, “You are so adorable, Sweetheart. I am truly honored to meet you and the others as you come through. My granddaughter tried your techniques first, then my grandson. Both of them made me feel so good inside. I forgot how good it made me feel to care for them.”

I replied as CARLY took my hand, “Am mostus glad. They wuz designeded ta relieve stress and teach a person how to let go of worries.”

The woman replied as CARLY led me from the office, “It surely has, too. Not only are my grandkids living the stress free lives of toddlers now, it has given me a sense of contentedness I had forgotten since they all grew up. And although I’m not as young as I used to be, now I’ve got an ITA to help with the work.”

I went to my first classroom to meet the new instructor, Miss Grigg. To my utter amazement, when I entered, I saw her writing on the virtual chalkboard, showing off her cute pink ruffles beneath the short hem of the matching strawberry fairy babydoll dress she had on. As poofy as her bottom was, I was sure she had on a diaper too.

The woman stopped writing on the board and put the e-marker down, and dusted her hands, although she wasn’t actually getting any chalk dust on them. When she saw me, her eyes grew large, and she squeaked out in an adorably infantile way, “Is you!” She giggled. “Miss Christina Inara! I am sooo glad ta meetcha.”

I was sort of surprised as I replied, “Hi, Mizz Grigg.” I sucked my thumb thoughtfully for a second or two and replied, “Am mostus happy ya lettin’ go an’ bein’ your true selfs.”

Miss Grigg replied as she bounced on her toes and clapped her hands, “Ooo, was so neatos too. Was in this store. There wuz this spritz bottlea sompin labeled Babypowder. I sprayed out some to see how it was. OMG!! Gots inna my mind an an an .. I jus knew wasa toddler.”

“Ohhhh am so happy our stuffs helped you!” I said excitedly.

“Sure did!” she said. “Never feeled so alive an’ happy!”

Then, not embarrassed at all, though I was absolutely sure she had wet her diaper when she’d seen me, she went back to the front of the class and started to talk quite maturely, though excitedly, about ancient Greek drama. It was clear that she loved the subject, and that helped the class stay interested too. That included me – it was one of the best lectures I’d ever sat through, and it was only the first one of the semester.

Before I knew it, time had passed and it was lunch. CARLY had led me back to the sorority house by my hand and changed my soggy diaper. CARLY had removed my dress and put me in my highchair in just panties and a thick diaper. Sally and Olivia were dressed the same as their ITAs fastened the belts holding them into their highchairs and lowered the trays over their heads.

CARLY leaned over and cooed softly, “Baby Christina, a visitor is arriving to share lunch with you.”

OMG!! I suddenly realized that all I had on was a diaper and panties with a bib as a top. Normally that wouldn’t bother a toddler like me, but I knew that I wasn’t dressed for what most adults would consider proper company. Then I realized that Miss Grigg was being led into the dining area by the hand by her ITA, who looked like a woman of about 35 and was dressed like any mother.

Miss Grigg squealed with joy as she asked in her infantile way, “Can … can baby eats wifs you too? I bea goo girl, promise!” She bounced slightly with excitement as her ITA stripped her down to just her diaper and panties and placed her into one of the empty high chairs.

The ITAs took over at that point. The next thing I knew, all of us were on the playmat having a wonderful plushy fight.

Miss Grigg’s ITA came to her and began putting her top on as she cooed softly, “OK, Baby Stephanie, time to pretend to be a big girl and go back to classes.”

“Aww, does baby hafta?”

Her ITA replied softly as she buttoned the babydoll dress up in back, “Yes, Sweetheart, we have to.”

While Miss Grigg whimpered like the toddler she appeared to be, our ITAs began dressing us and getting us ready to pretend to be big girls and return to our next class. Mine was Graphic Arts.

When CARLY led me into the art room, OMG!! My mind went nuts. All I could see laid across one large play table was this huge sheet of pristinely white paper … and many tubes and jars of PAINT!!!

Next thing I knew, I was having the time of my life finger painting, making the largest and funnest mess any toddler could make. Of course, the instructor and his aides stood by with huge grins on their faces as they watched the several babydolls and toddlers they had in their class do what infants do best … make a massive mess with paints.

As any good toddler would have done, I didn’t stop until there was no paper left that wasn’t covered with at least one color of paint. And then, the instructor said, “OK, class, I’d like you to take a step back and have a look.”

“Huh?” I said, and the others also seemed to snap out of it, looking at the huge sheet of paper on the floor. What was there was … fantastic. There were flowers, faces, and animals both real and imaginary. There were stars and planets, geometric designs, houses and trees, and vehicles of many kinds. I stood awestruck at what we’d made. It was beautiful. So colorful. Graphic art had as its goal the catching of the viewer’s eye, the attraction of attention. This had all of that, but with no specific direction.

“Many artists spend their lives trying to recapture the spontaneity they had as children,” said the instructor. “I think we’ve just shown that you … will not have that problem.” He nodded with approval. “This is amazing! The thing about graphic art is that you must have both a goal and a creative approach to that goal. Usually my students are fine with the goal, but need to learn the creative approach. You … are taking the opposite path. But we will get there. This is a good start. We’ll get the room cleaned up and let your creation dry, and we’ll see you next time.”

“You have paint all over you, and your diaper needs a change,” said CARLY with a smile. “Let’s get you back to the house.”

While CARLY pushed me back towards the sorority house, I noticed several large mountains of meat harassing a young woman dressed in the cutest fuzzy wuzzy romper.

I pointed and said to CARLY, “That bad … we needs stop em from messin wiffa baby thatta ways.”

CARLY replied, “I agree. I wonder where her ITA is and why it isn't there to defend her.”

As we approached, we saw the girl’s ITA lying on the ground with most of its head caved in and many sparks showing around it in a large electrical halo. This enabled CARLY’s emergency defense protocol.

Carly stopped my buggy at a safe distance, then turned and rapidly approached the large young men who were so intent on harassing the girl that they didn’t notice CARLY rapidly approaching.

I knew that like all ITAs, CARLY had a defense system installed at her manufacture, although there were few who had ever seen it enabled. When an ITA’s owner was under attack, and the ITA was disabled, nearby ITAs made by the same manufacturer would come to defend its owner. CARLY arrived, and basically walked through the ruffians and had them all either running scared or lying on the ground groaning in pain.

When CARLY helped the girl from the ground, my mouth fell open in total shock. It was Bertha, and she was dressed in the cutest romper, and it was also obvious from the puffiness of her bottom that she was in a thick “crawly diaper,” which was my word for a diaper so thick that it made walking difficult. No wonder she’d had a hard time defending herself.

I gasped out in shock, “Berfa ... Zat chu?”

The girl looked over with wide eyes and replied, “It is. I decided to try out your relaxation techniques.” She giggled, “They were fun, and the outfits are really cute. I … I’ve been working through some issues.”

Security drones soon arrived to ensure there was no further violence occurring, and then the emergency medical ITAs CARLY had summoned came to ensure Bertha and the others’ wounds, if any, were treated. Nobody had anything more than minor bruises, however; CARLY had been quite precise. Another ITA arrived as well; he picked up Bertha’s ITA and said to Bertha, “Ma’am, I’m here to take your ITA to the nearest repair facility. A temporary ITA will report to you shortly, to take over her duties until yours is back in working order. OK?”

“OK, that’s fine, thanks,” Bertha said. “You can fix her all up?”

“Not me personally, but the repair technicians will either repair her chassis or transfer her entire systemware suite to a new one. You appear to have appropriate insurance. Please be safe.” He carried the damaged ITA toward a vehicle.

A group of us had gathered around Bertha and walked with her into the College Cafeteria. We all sat at several tables we had pushed together. It looked like a display of babydolls.

I asked, “Is you ok Berfa? Your ITA took a huge amounta damage.”

Bertha answered back with a whimper and a sniffle, “I it … it gots hit wiffa bat inna head when it stepped in ta defend me fromma bully.” and she began to cry.

Several of our ITAs came to her and started cooing, calling her baby, and cutie pie, and other nice comforting phrases. One even made a huge deal out of checking her diaper to make sure she was dry and comfy.

Somehow this just made her cry more. “Waaaaaah!” she wailed. “I’m supposed to be all tough and mean and win games and stuff! I’m so mean I just barely stayed in school! But I did horrible things to you and you’re all being so nice to me!”

“Protocol for Assistronomics ITAs when another ITA from the same manufacturer is offline is to assist that ITA’s owner during spare cycles,” said CARLY.

“I guess your ITA’s also from Assistronomics,” I said. “But also … yeah, you did some bad things, but it looks like you’re finding out something about why you seem to need to be so hard on yourself and everybody else all the time?”

“Uh huh,” said Bertha. “I gotta learn how to keep the aggression on the field better. Onna field … the other side better look out ‘cause I’mma bring the power!” She looked like the old Bertha for a moment there. “But … the resta the time I gotta channel it. Turn the energy toward studying. Or being a good friend. But those boys … they thought I wasn’t gonna fight them ‘cause I got weak. No! I couldn’t fight ‘em or else I’d get expelled! I’m already on serious probation.”

“Your ITA’s storage is intact,” said CARLY. “There will be no further consequences for you from this incident. Full video is available and will show that you were not at fault.”

“S-she’s OK?” Bertha asked. “I mean … she’s going to be?”

“Yes, although they’re going to replace her head with a new one custom-made to the same specifications,” said CARLY. “Too many parts were destroyed. However, no data was lost.”

“That’s … a relief,” said Bertha. “I mean, I know TINA’s an ITA, but for a while there it was like she was my only friend.”

“Wait, your ITA is a TINA?” I asked. “That’s kinda like my name.”

“Well … yeah,” Bertha said, looking sheepish. “I used to kinda push her around, only then I realized it didn’t really mean anything because she was a machine, and I owned her, so I stopped doing that … but it wasn’t like I was treating the people around me any better. Kinda messed up, I know. But now that she’s down for the count, I feel worried about her.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “ITAs aren’t humans, but they have personalities and memories, and they try to do their best for us. CARLY’s kind of like my friend. Sounds like they’ll get TINA fixed up good as new. But it looks like you weren’t hurt, or at least not too bad?”

“Naw, I’ve had way worse on the soccer field,” said Bertha. “Couple scrapes and bruises. They’ll go away.”

“Well …” I said. It was very hard to feel empathy for her, but she was almost like a different person now. “That’s good. We need ya out there scorin’ points!”

“Uh … I don’t score points,” said Bertha. “I’m the goalie.”

“Oh. Uh, we need ya out there keepin’ the other team from scorin’ points!” I tried to sound as chipper as I’d sounded the first time.

“Heh,” said Bertha. “Well let’s hope I can get my grades back up.”

“I know a way to do that, if you’re interested …” I said.

“Oh, I’ve been reading all your stuff,” said Bertha. “I’ve already installed a babysitter app on TINA and was getting her set up … and then this happened.”

“Well I’m sure the other ITAs can help … oh wait, that depends on where you’re living. CARLY, do you know how long it’ll be before TINA’s back in working order?”

“It seems likely to be a week,” said CARLY. “Custom parts are quick to manufacture, but they still require a special order. But as they said, a temporary ITA is being assigned and should arrive shortly.”

While we sat around and babbled at each other, an elongated van type vehicle showed up. It had balls for wheels and could maneuver in many custom ways to park and not obstruct traffic.

A young man climbed out of the drivers compartment with an electronic clipboard in his hand. He walked up to us and brought out some type of scanning device which he ran over all of us until he came to Bertha.

He smiled pleasantly and said, “Hi, you must be Bertha Kelso. I’m sorry your ITA was injured. We will have her all fixed up good as new in about seven to ten days. In the mean time, we have a temporary replacement for you.”

The young man walked to the sliding side door and opened it. An extremely beautiful and very petite ITA stepped out, dressed exactly like a babydoll. She walked up to Bertha, curtsied adorably, and said in a shy voice, “Hi, Miss Kelso.” She then checked Bertha’s diaper, “I’m INGA, your new babysitter. I promise to take very good care of you until your ITA is well.”

The young man had Bertha place her thumb on the lower portion of the electronic clipboard. It made a beeping noise, and a small voice said, “Identity verified. Bertha Kelso.”

The young man smiled as he started to enter the driver’s compartment once again, “I have to tell you, the infant protocols are enabled and all settings are locked at the factory. I’m sorry, but you have no access to them and will have to comply with her instructions.” The door shut, “She is, after all, the adult, and you are just a baby.” Then he drove off.

“What?” I said. “That’s … uh …”

Bertha turned toward me. “It’s … what was imposed on me because of my academic probation. I had to choose a plan to keep me on track.” She was blushing brightly. “And … your stress-reduction through age regression plan was one of the approved plans. It seemed more … appropriate somehow. And frankly more fun than some of the other ones.”

“Oh, wow! I didn’t know!” The university had officially approved my plan? “I was going to say … it’s like what my mom did to my ITA before sending me to college.”

“What? So your ITA does the same thing to you?” asked Bertha. I nodded; this time I was the one who was blushing. “So it wasn’t even your choice,” she said. “Now I feel even worse for being so awful to you.”

“I’m sorry, Baby Bertha,” said INGA, arriving with a tray of food, “but if you are going to go to bed at your scheduled time, I will have to insist that you finish your meal now.” She reached into her diaper bag and took out a bib, which she tied around Bertha’s neck. “Now, open wide for INGA, dear.”

“Ah!” said Bertha, and INGA immediately popped a spoonful of beef stew into her mouth. “Mmth … I talk to you later, OK?” she said once she’d swallowed and could get a word in edgewise.

“OK, Bertha, we’ll talk more,” I said. “Bye-bye! Take good care of her, INGA.”

“I most certainly shall,” said INGA, feeding Bertha another mouthful of stew.

“The timing is fortuitous,” said CARLY, “because it is time for us to return to the sorority house for dinner. Your bedtime is also approaching. And I believe you need a diaper change.” She took my hand and led me to the door, and then she put me into my stroller for the walk to the house.

Once we were back, we joined the several other girls in the dining room who were in high chairs being fed by their ITAs, only most of them had on nothing but their diapers, pretty plastic lined panties, and bibs. I was more dressed since I’d just come from outside, and CARLY didn’t want to spend the extra time getting me changed. She said my diaper could wait until after supper. So there I was, my pretty babydoll clothes protected with a bib, while CARLY fed me my supper.

----------------------------------------------------------------

In a large auditorium-style conference room, many men and women were gathered. A man walked to the lectern and banged a gavel as he said loudly, “This conference will come to order please.” The sounds of people taking their seats lasted only an instant as all conversation ceased. “We are gathered here today to discuss a new phenomenon that is sweeping the earth.”

A very pretty young woman dressed in a short jumper stood and raised her hand and was recognized, “My name is Dr. Darcy Woods. I’m the director of Adverian Mental Health. I would like to start this meeting off by saying that those regression techniques are extremely effective in dealing with suicidal tendencies and severe clinical depression. We have so far had excellent results and no relapses.”

The man at the lectern turned to his ITA, who nodded and displayed a paper by Dr. Woods and her colleagues in a holographic window. “I do have that report here,” said the facilitator. “From what it states, these results are far better than using any type of drug and have caused no adverse side effects so far – other than some easily manageable incontinence.”

Dr. Woods replied, “That’s true, Dr. Giannaro. Also, ITAs can be programmed to enforce the regression protocols for any length of time. Apparently, a small group of practitioners have created and marketed software for ITAs that do just that. Every review of the app we’ve read, in addition to our own studies, indicate that it is high quality and safe, not like some that can be found on the net.”

A loud murmur rounded the huge chamber for a few minutes before Dr. Giannaro banged his gavel. “Please come to order,” he said. “I do realize this is unprecedented in all of the mental health annals. This is the reason we are here today. The FDA is ready to start the approval process for the first-developed treatment programs using these techniques. I can see you appear to be a practitioner yourself.”

Dr. Woods’ blush could been seen from the lectern as she replied, “Why, yes. I am what the program refers to as a Little Girl. The outfits are nice, cute, and professional at the same time. The stress relief is amazing once the program starts. There are other aspects of the program that are even more adorable, although they are for a much younger mindset.”

Several of the younger men and women stood up and showed off their adorable outfits at that point. Of course, the women and the men dressed as toddler girls had to show off their ruffled and diapered bottoms.

Dr. Giannaro said, “This is one of the reasons we are here today. We need to agree on guidelines for treatment programs featuring these age regression-based stress reduction techniques. Pop-psych versions of them are spreading around the world very rapidly. But we want them applied safely and scientifically, to minimize risk to patients’ mental health and to maximize their efficacy.”

“Assuredly,” said a man in a suit. “We must realize that there are people for whom these techniques could be harmful. They’re not for everyone, as effective as they are for many people.”

“Precisely,” said Dr. Giannaro. “There’s no such thing as one size fits all in mental health. But of course, people will self-diagnose and self-treat; there’s no preventing that. What we must do, though, is ensure that when mental health professionals prescribe these techniques, they’re as part of a coordinated and tested program of treatment.”

There were murmurings of agreement around the room, which soon quieted down. “Dr. Woods, we’ve all read your paper,” said Dr. Giannaro. “This work is groundbreaking, and the profession owes you a debt. I hope you continue your work and further investigate the effects of these techniques. And Dr. Rhodos, you and your team have done some excellent work with creating programs of treatment with proper guidelines and goals; this is also invaluable. It is programs such as these that must be evaluated and approved by the FDA before they can be ethically and safely used by professionals around the world.”

A woman in a professional but lacy jumper dress stood up. “Yes, Dr. Tanneke? Dr. Tanneke is from State University, where the student-led movement began that started all of this.”

“Yes, I’d like to mention my student, May Amador, who was one of the pioneers. She co-wrote the bestselling book that is still driving interest in regressive stress reduction, and although I offered some guidance, the students have been doing nearly all of the work themselves. Ms. Amador’s friend, Christina Inara, is the one who really started it all.” At Christina’s name there was a large wave of murmuring around the hall; there were few who hadn’t heard her name recently.

“Yes,” said Dr. Giannaro, “I’m hearing a lot about her. I understand there are thousands of social media accounts claiming to be her, but she doesn’t actually use social media?”

“No, that’s correct,” said Dr. Tanneke. “Even the fake accounts, which are started as quickly as they’re shut down, are so terribly polarizing, attracting so much simultaneous love and hate. I’m working on a study of that particular phenomenon right now. There are some who see someone they perceive as self-embarrassing and can’t help attacking, although the possibility of reprisal and the appearance of helplessness are also factors … that’s not germane to this conference, of course.”

“That’s true, we should stay on topic,” said Dr. Giannaro, “but I’ll be interested to see the results of your study in any case. To return to the subject at hand, though, I understand there’s both a sorority and a fraternity now, with chapters appearing at colleges and universities everywhere.”

“Yes, Ms. Inara and her friends started one, and a group of young men soon created their own,” said Dr. Tanneke. “These students seem to be very good at starting businesses, although they have also been relying on some very good ITA software as well as some well-chosen staff. However, what they’ve started is a self-help fad that I hope does more good than harm, since most people following it aren’t doing so with any professional guidance. I did manage to get them to add a note in the book urging people to contact a therapist before beginning any actual treatment program.”

There was general agreement in the room; all of them knew there was only so much the professionals could do to control popular self-help movements, but that such movements also tended to burn themselves out as they were replaced by the next big thing.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I sat in my large playpen in my new office. I couldn’t believe how things had worked out. I had graduated with a degree in graphic arts, only to start making all the graphic displays for my own company, Babies’ Playground, Inc. Sally had fit right in in the quality control department; she loved being the baby and playing with all the new toys, having all the new outfits tried on, and making a huge mess with the aromas as they were developed.

Olivia had become the VP of Marketing and did a remarkable job as our products spread and became ever more popular. I did manage to create a line of outfits that were infantile, but in a professional business way that Olivia loved and fit right into the image our company maintained.

The most amazing thing of all was the new product we had just started manufacturing and marketing, the Infant Care ITA. It was a line of ITAs whose primary function was the care and well-being of their infant, regardless of how large the tykes happened to be. The big ITA companies were trying to compete by selling baby wipe and powder attachments for their products, but when it came to baby care, ours were the best. Specialization was only good when there was a niche to fill, but we’d found one, and it was a big one. Even though the initial fad had come and gone, there was still a sizeable segment of the population for whom regression was the best form of stress relief, relaxation, and focus assistance.

Bertha had turned her academic career around and had learned to channel her aggression onto the soccer field. Regression-based stress relief had helped her to feel quite calm and in control when she needed to, so she was able to study, pay attention in class, and take tests with complete focus. She had gone on to play professionally after graduation, and in fact we’d hired her as a spokesperson for our products. Her commercials had made her even more famous and made us even more money.

May, Sally, and Kelly were across from me in the large playpen, and we all were having a small plushy tea party. It was fun. All of us only had on diapers and plastic lined rumba panties and looked exactly like babydolls.

Congress had passed new regulations against workplace discrimination and harassment of all who practiced the regression relaxation techniques that had proven to be so effective. It had unlocked a part of the mind in the practitioner’s minds that allowed them to excel in almost anything they did.

The infants had proven to be so versatile that most employers preferred to have complete departments entirely staffed by toddlers and littles, complete with a staff of the new Infant Care ITAs, which had proven to be above and beyond almost any other type of care provider ever manufactured.

As I started to drift into my infantile mind, I wondered, “Just where am I going, and where will I be when I arrive?” I looked around at my friends, because I was taking them with me.

–––––––––––––––––––––– THE END –––––––––––––––––––––
Sunshine & rainbows,
LilJennie
User avatar
LilJennie
 
Posts: 43
Joined: Mon Jun 23, 2014 9:38 pm
Location: Boominton, Inidana
Mastodon: @liljennie@meow.social

Return to The Story Circle

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 82 guests

cron