First rejuve/Page5

"All-right, take off the cuffs!" Terence had been surprised at how short the trip from Mars to Earth had been. When he had been sent to the colony on Mars the prison was treated as remote enough to be safe while close enough that the Earth Government could keep a close eye on it. The trip out nearly forty years ago had taken a week of constant flight with himself and his other convicts bound against the wall and being fed and watered daily.

The trip back had take two hours. He assumed this meant that ships had gotten faster, not that the planets had gotten closer. Which was surprising since the streamlined prison craft that had brought him to earth wasn't even capable of light speed. At best the planetary hopper had been going about forty thousand times the speed of sound. Had he been in a space-fleet class vessel or one of those Trader's ships he would have assumed a travel time of a couple of minutes.

"How was the trip, Tanner!" A gouty looking man was grinning at Terrence while two officers undid and removed a pair of digi-coded handcuffs from the convicts limp wrists. "Well enough. In flight meal was little to be desired, although I liked the robots attempt at the cancan!" There was no indication on Terrence's face as to whether this was a joke or not so the podgy man simply ignored it and gave a jovial smile. "Very good Telford!" he responded, "Well I'm hoping your going to like your new home on earth. We're drawing up the paperwork for your 'release' as we speak. Prior to the treatment you will have to have a company guard with you at all times of course, but afterwards you will be placed in the care of one of my men!" Terrence fell into step behind the large mass that was apparently the guy in charge. He resisted the urge to ask the man's name since he clearly couldn't be bothered learning other peoples.

"I see. And I will be essentially free afterwards?" "Oh yes, indeed Taylor, yes in deed!" The large man led the way to a company car, it was a brown coloured miniature limo, easily big enough for all five men plus a driver. "I only ask cause right now I still seam to be a prisoner!" "Yes well, precautions and everything!" Mr gouty face replied. "Once you've been through the treatments you will be fitted with equipment that monitors your vitals and everything you understand. They will be in you for a year and will tell us what we need to know." "And you'll be given a schedule!"

Terrence ducked his head and looked into the car before getting in. A man was sitting there wearing a pinstripe shirt. "Name's Toby! I'm one of the lead scientists in charge of the project!" Carefully folding his thin body the man climbed into the limo and took his seat. "As I'm sure was explained, after undergoing the treatment you will technically be the age of a child. Most likely somewhere around the age of ten. Having been 'rejuved'" he made quotation mark signs with his hands, "as we're calling it, you will be required to attend the facility every couple of days for tests and will be enrolled at a local school. However outside of these hours you will be free to do whatever else you want."

Terrence frowned. "I see." he said with a monotone. The trip continued mostly in silence as the group made their way to the facility, Toby explaining just what the experiment was expected to do and re-assuring that Terrence wasn't their first human subject. Terrence asked few questions, simply listening to the man and encouraging everyone else to speak. It was a talent he learned in the industry. The less he talked, the more people tried to fill the silence, as a result it didn't take long to learn about Violet and her rejuvenation or the fact that she was currently at school for 'rehabilitation purposes'.

Once inside the laboratories Terrence was given robes to change into, and the papers put in front of him to sign, proving that he was doing this of his own free will. Then put under with a local anaesthetic his thin wiry frame was taken to the rejuvenation chamber.

The machine buzzed and hummed while the earth computers attached to it clicked whirred and beeped in time to a steady staccato rhythm and very carefully the elderly man was loaded onto the platform, the clear lid with its radiating crossbars lowered over him. A sequence of characters were punched into the computer, activating the machine and filling the chamber with a gas that would keep him sleeping while slowly but surely Terrence's body began to glow with the resonance of chronostatic radiation.

The process of rejuvenation took roughly an hour, the whole thing being filmed on camera as Terrence became smaller, his genitals collapsing and shrinking up into the body before splitting and starting to form a vagina. His hair stayed the same length, as did the hair on his body and would be removed post-rejuve using a depilatator. But prior to this monitoring devices would be installed and a full scan done using Tessla's machine.

Terrence awoke later that day in a rather slow fashion. First his ears woke up, telling him that there were people in the room. Three of them, with two sounding like the voices of children. They were talking about soccer and school work so this was most likely Violet and a friend. The other, a woman's voice was talking with them. Next Terrence's sense of feeling woke up and he noticed that the woman was applying some kind of cream to his chest. Opening one eye a small crack he could see the bottle it was in, a pump action bottle containing a greenish translucent liquid. The bottle was marked nanites and was put on the counter beside Terry, he closed his eye. "I'm surprised she hasn't woken up by now!" the child was saying, "I woke up rather quickly after my rejuve!" "Rather being a mute point. You rolled over and fell out of bed!" "O did she she now?" a boy was asking, Terrence risked another peek then made a show of pretending he hadn't already been awake.

Violet jumped when the new rejuve sat up, eyes still closed, and stretched before opening her eyes and looking around brightly. "Oh! Hello..." she faltered, "Ah. I have a different voice!" "You're different in lots of ways." the young girl replied. "Morning Terry, welcome to your second childhood. As we discussed you are now approximately eight years old, female and dressed in a hospital gown!" "My name's Violet!" Terry looked at the dark haired girl, trying not to say much. "This is Adrian he's a friend of mine from school." "So your the one in charge of all this?" "Yep!" Violet beamed, "Your now officially our second test subject, I'm glad you signed up. It seams my husband made some pretty good alterations to the technology!" Terry looked at his hands. "So small. Can I look at myself please!" The older woman shrugged.

"Sure, can you help me get her out of bed Adrian?" Complying, Terry was lugged to her feet and rather awkwardly helped towards a mirror. "You're going to be a little unsteady at first!" Violet reassured, "Your body has to relearn how to work after a rejuve. Tessy and I will help you as much as we can. "Tessy is it?" Terry laughed hollowly. "Tassla Chandler!" the woman confirmed, "I'm head of the medical department here at    Estral Sciences. You'll be reporting to me regularly for check-ups, you can tall me Tessla like everyone else!"

Terry nodded, "And you can call me... I suppose Terrence doesn't fit any more does it!" Terry looked in the mirror. In front of her eyes was a girl, being assisted to stand on too wobbly feet. Black hair, pale skin with broad lashes she looked too much like a stick figure for comfort, making the scientists worry if something had gone wrong, but for all the thin legs and arms Terry had a healthy body weight for a child her new age. Deep sunken eyes looked back at her as Terry turned and started carefully moving around the room, teaching her legs how to move and not trip over each other. Before too long they were slowly leaving the room and Violet started showing Terry around the facility. Tessla left the three children to their own devices while she went to report Terry's state and go over some figures.

"This is Adrian's first time in the facility too!" Violet was telling the boy, "A lot of this stuff is more or less secret, but since Adrian is one of the children helping me with my rehabilitation at school I thought it only fair he see the chamber and watch you getting rejuved." "It was completely surreal!" the boy responded, "You looked like you were like, aging backwards for a while. Your white hair turned dark and then all the sudden your genitals went Schwoop and vanished!"

"I noticed." Terry responded, "I mean they mentioned that it was possible for genders to become reverse!" "Yeah, we're working on that." Violet blushed as she showed her new friends into the medical labs where Tessla kept her giant scanner. "The Drakonian's all turn out male, and humans all turn out female. It doesn't seam able to handle unpaired chromosomes. The way the drakonian's get around this is by disabling the error checking in the program but when we do that it also stops the machine from fixing things that should be fixed. Like your dicky heart that you had operated on."

Terry blinked. "You knew about that?" "We found out! Cause of this machine here." Violet stood in front of the scanner. "Looks scary doesn't it, but this machine can create a full 3-dimensional model of a person's body down to the finest level. Amongst other medical uses Tessla intends for it to make exploratory operations redundant, eliminate the need for autopsies and replace the multiple different scanners already in the market!

Terry was watching his surroundings and being careful. Not planning to hang around longer than necessary she had already figured out the way to the exits, identified laser scalpels and medical tools that could be used to remove tracking devices and other useful gizmo’s that could make him some profit on the side by selling them to competitor companies. She was wondering if any of her old contacts were still around and whether or not they would do business with her now as a child. If all else failed she could probably sleep with somebody important and blackmail them into giving her what she needed. That was the advantage of having a body this young, she wouldn't be suspected of anything.

"I trust I won't be living here in the centre?" Terry asked suddenly, catching Violet mid-narration. "Only I was told I would have time to myself and some level of freedom. Or is this just a different form of jail?" "Not a jail at all!" the voice came from somewhere behind the machinery. "In fact," Tessla appeared from amongst her work. "I've just been given approval. The man who has been acting as Violet's driver has a flat large enough to accommodate a guest. You'll be moving in on him!" 'And making moves on him.' Terry kept his sadistic thoughts to himself.

"That means you'll be staying with Harden, I think his name is, and we'll see each other every day when he comes and picks me up for school!" Grinning, Violet placed an arm around Terry, then another around Adrian. "He'll be attending the same school then?" "Most probably!" "Come on then, I'll introduce you to Harden and we'll head down to the school and sort you out!" She grinned, "Class is over for the day but it'll help you to know the place!"

Without thinking Violet started skipping down the hall. She could not have been happier than she was right now.