Chapter 37: SM03-Pi, Day 0

Anna Brubaker woke slowly, her head fuzzy. She felt her husband's hands tying her up, and smiled to herself. Her wrists were bound, and her ankles, before she awoke enough to remember that Justin was dead in a car wreck, crushed by a lorry two years ago. The gag went in before she could scream, and a loop of rope pulled her ankles and wrists together before she could struggle. The arousal she'd started to feel was replaced by fear, until she heard the giggling of her attackers and a half-whispered "You shouldn't have done that; we're all going to be in so much trouble!" That abated the fear somewhat; it wasn't a rapist, just some of her girls going on a rampage again. How twelve year olds knew such things was beyond her. She struggled to get loose, but the knots were tight, too tight, and she couldn't slip them. She tried to scream through the gag, but that too was well executed, and she lay exhausted from her efforts.

Steve Miller woke slowly, then started as he heard a round of giggles from the women he discovered were surrounding his bed. He sat up suddenly, then froze as he took in his surroundings. He was laying in a ridiculously large bed, in what looked like a typically anonymous hotel room. The only things missing were the generic art prints, and a large window with a lousy city view. Interestingly, the wallpaper matched his oddly-patterned clothing; he seemed to be wearing some kind of cross between pajamas and a martial arts gi. He usually wore a pair of cut-off shorts to sleep in, not anything like this. And to the best of his recollection, he didn't own any clothing in a blue and yellow pastel rose print.

There was also the highly disquieting fact that his last memory wasn't of going to sleep, but of sitting along the highway trying to figure out a new route around some construction.

The giggles had cut off abruptly when he sat up so quickly. Nine pairs of startled eyes, and nine pairs of perky young breasts, stared at him. As quickly as they'd stopped, they started giggling again. Steve found it odd; they all looked nineteen or twenty, but they acted eleven or twelve. Strangely enough, they were all dressed in the same kind of outfit he found himself wearing, and in the same oddly colored pattern. Three of the women were the blackest people he'd ever seen; the rest were Caucasian.

One of the black women spoke up. "Sorry to have awakened you," she said, "but we've been looking for someone who can explain what's happened to us, and you're the first man we've found. We're all students from a boarding school in Brisbane, and we were on a class trip to the Outback when we woke up here. We've not seen any of our teachers or other classmates, and we're very very scared. Not to mention the fact that I had my twelfth birthday last week, and I've suddenly grown 15 centimeters and I've got hips and bosoms and a bum when I looked like a boy this morning."

She suddenly started crying, and Steve instinctively reached out and pulled her into his arms, and tried to comfort her. He was somewhat limited by not knowing her name, and one of her classmates helped him by saying, "It's all right Sarah, we're all in the same boat. For all we know he's really ten, instead of twenty-one."

Steve snickered, and said, "Actually, I'm forty-five, if you must know." He continued to stroke Sarah's back, and said, "Although I admit I don't feel that old right now."

Sarah lifted her head back off of his chest and said, "No, you look just exactly as old as we do; if you're forty-five then you've grown younger as we've grown older." She turned suddenly shy, and turned away from him and said, "I'm sorry I cried all over you."

Steve stroked her back again, and said, "Think nothing of it. If nothing else, it gave me something to keep my mind off the fact that I'm in the middle of an absolutely impossible situation. At least if I'm going to be confused, I get to do it while surrounded by beautiful women."

If Steve hadn't been told that the women surrounding him were just becoming teenagers despite all appearances, the next few minutes would have convinced him. He got nine distinct reactions, but they could all be summarized by "You think I'm pretty? Really?". He'd never met anyone with that kind of self-image problem that was older than sixteen, and these women all looked twenty. Now that he thought of it, their mannerisms were also much 'younger' than the rest of their appearance. It was the kind of thing that made him so good as a doorman at the bars he'd worked in college; he'd been pretty good at catching the fake ID's, even before he'd seen the card, just by watching the kids as they presented it.

Steve could tell he was going to be in for a rough ride. All of the women were at least pretty, and several were downright beautiful, but if they really were twelve years old, he wasn't going to be intimate with any of them. And that was going to be hard to handle, because he was pretty sure they weren't going to like it, and were going to be trying very hard to get him to change his mind.

Steve looked around at the women surrounding him, and asked, "So, what have you found out about this place? Do any of you remember anything about how we got here?" There was a general response of "Not Much" and "No", but a couple of the girls in the back seemed to be hiding something. Deciding not to push it for the moment, Steve said, "Then let's get out there and look around again. See if there's anything that might be a phone or other communications device."

Steve climbed out of bed, and moved towards the doorway. The girls (he wasn't able to call them women, as their 'real' age became more apparent and overrode their appearance) followed in a loose gaggle, the ones who'd raised his suspicions carefully trailing behind while trying to avoid being obvious about it. Definitely preteens; they didn't seem to think that adults could possibly have any idea what they were thinking.

As Steve entered the hallway, he noticed a line of open archways on both sides, with a single exception. There was a closed doorway partway down his side of the hallway. He walked up to the door, and examined the small panel to the side, right where the Star Trek set designers had put their 'touch panels.' There was a small blue padlock symbol showing, and when Steve touched it, a mechanical voice spoke, saying "Entrance locked. Password?"

Steve considered making a joke response, but a motion seen out of the corner of his eye diverted him. When he turned to see what had drawn his eye, one of the girls paled, and ducked behind her nearest neighbor. Steve put a stern look on his face, and said in a harsh tone. "Alright, young lady, what do you know about this?" The girl tried harder to hide, but one of the other girls grabbed her and pushed her forward. The pusher said, "OK, Julie, time to pay for your little prank." She turned to Steve, and said, "I was there, I should have stopped her, but I was so afraid, I could hardly think. I'm Kim Johnson, and this is Julie Robertson." Turning back to Julie, she said, "Go on, open it."

Julie was nearly in tears, but she stepped up, and touched the door and said, "Unlock. Password 'Open Sesame.'" There was a chime, and the door slid open, vanishing into the sides of the archway. Steve looked at the frame curiously; there didn't seem to be quite enough room for the door to fit into the length of wall between the two archways. His attempt to analyze the engineering was abruptly halted as he noticed that the room was occupied by a young woman with a gag in her mouth and her arms and legs hogtied behind her back.

Steve glared at Julie, then strode quickly into the room, and removed the woman's gag. He started to untie the ropes, noting that whoever had bound her hadn't paid nearly enough attention to maintaining circulation. "This is going to sting as the blood starts flowing again," he told the woman. "Sorry about that, but it's unavoidable at this point. The name's Steve Miller, by the way."

Steve waved Julie into the room with a curt gesture. "Am I to understand that this is your doing?" He didn't wait for an answer, but turned to Kim and asked her, "And what was your part in all this? Was anyone else involved?" Steve was in full angry-father mode at this point, and didn't think to ask the victim any questions. She took care of that problem by speaking up. "I think I heard Kim trying to tell them to stop; judging by the number of hands I think there were at least two and probably three who tied me up. I was asleep, and woke to the sensations of being bound; by the time I was awake, I was helpless and gagged. Thank you for your assistance and your concern."

While she had been speaking, Steve had finished the task of untying her. When he finished, she sat up, and looked around. At first she looked puzzled, then she started violently. "What's happened to me? How long have I been like this? You've all grown up!" The woman was clearly starting to panic, and Steve took her shoulders in his hands and spoke sharply, telling her "Calm down! Whatever has happened has happened to them, not to you. They all told me that the last thing they remember, they were twelve years old, and now they look twenty."

Kim spoke in what was most likely a misleadingly calm voice. "No, sir, I think it happened to all of us, just in different directions. I didn't recognize her until now, but that's Mrs. Anna Brubaker, the Headmistress of our school. The last time I saw her, she looked like my grandmother, and now she looks like we do."

Anna flinched, and said, "Grandmother, dear? I've met your grandmother, and I hope I wasn't that far gone. She's quite well preserved for her age, but she's got several decades on me. Rather more than that, now, if I really do look like you do."

Steve reinforced Kim's comment. "Yes, I'd say you look like a typical twenty-year-old, as do they. I suppose I look the same?" Steve glanced at his hands, and noticed that the scars from his bicycle accident were missing. "Younger, and without some of the scars I had the last time I was this age. I'm beginning to get a bit nervous about this."

One of the other girls started giggling, and said, "Mrs. Brubaker, you've wet yourself!" The other girls started to look, then turned away, embarrassed. Steve couldn't help glancing down, and saw a damp spot at Anna's crotch. His nose chose that moment to inform him that the stain wasn't urine, and he exercised that fatherhood training again, diverting the girl's attention.

"That's quite enough. All of you outside, so Mrs. Brubaker can have some privacy. I think I saw a largish open room at the end of the hallway; we'll meet her there once she's cleaned up." Turning to Anna, he said, "Maybe you can find a change of clothes or some way to clean this set. If you need help, just yell."

Steve herded the girls out of the room and down the hallway. If you'd ever smelled it, the odor from Anna's clothing was unmistakable, so the girls must really have been both prepubescent and without older siblings or friends to introduce them to the facts of life.