The Regression Stone

The Plan

The twins were the first to the top of the stairs, with Cole directly behind. As he reached the top step, he really noticed how much taller the twins were than he was. They may have all have become younger, but he had shrunk the most from yesterday. He now had to tilt his head upward to get a look at them, which made him feel slightly awkward. He shook it off, knowing it was outside of his control and followed them into their room.

Sonia sat down at her desk and booted her laptop up, Cole and Darcy grabbed chairs and pulled them up behind her before sitting down. As her laptop was loading, Sonia pulled out her phone and showed it to Cole.

"What do you think it means that you're not in my phone anymore?" she asked him.

Cole began looking around sheepishly, averting his eyes from hers for a moment. He felt very young in the moment, realizing how his toes barely touched the ground on the chair, and how small his body had become.

"I don't have a cell phone anymore...I think I got too young." he responded, not making eye contact with the girls. Darcy shot her sister a look and Sonia blushed before putting her phone away.

"So that's why we couldn't get a hold of you, this version of you never had a cell phone." Darcy tried to save the topic.

Cole nodded his head and looked back up to Darcy,

"Do you think we're even still friends in this reality?" he questioned.

Darcy thought it over for a few moments before responding.

"Who knows, it doesn't matter to us, we're going to be friends no matter what!"

This brought a smile back to Cole's face, and then Sonia's in response. The computer had finally loaded, and Sonia logged on to her browser to begin searching the meteor shower from a few nights ago. Cole and Darcy brought their chairs closer to get a better look, and began helping Sonia with search topics.

They didn't find anything on meteorites that made people younger, which is what they assumed, but the meteor shower did happen and no strange events took place, and there was no information on anyone finding a meteorite.

They tried searching for glowing meteorites, but could only find how hot it became after entering the atmosphere and cautions to avoid touching a hot meteorite.

Finally they searched for unknown phenomena, but that too turned up with nothing.

"So what now?" Sonia asked, spinning her chair around to the others. They sat in silence again, taking turns looking at each other and hoping that one would come up with an idea. Nobody was willing to speak up.

A minute of silence passed, then Sonia looked at Cole, thinking she might have an idea.

"Does your bedroom change each day?"

"Yeah, small changes but every day it's like it's tailored to me at my new age" was his response.

"What about the meteorite?" Sonia continued her questioning.

"Yeah that's still there, why?" he responded.

As Sonia began to explain her theory, a light bulb went off in Cole's head.

"So why is the meteorite staying there if everything else is changing?"

The three began to pause to think on this and what it means.

"Maybe this Cole went out and picked it up just like I did?" came Cole's response.

"But that was late at night! No offense Cole but that would've been way past your bedtime" Darcy chimed in.

Cole frowned and looked away from the twins, again reminded of his new childish life. He shook those thoughts off and confidently joined back in the conversation.

"I can check with my parents tonight to see if I went out to watch the meteor shower. And if I didn't, how is the meteorite the one thing that's not changing?"

"Are you still going to keep it?" Darcy chimed in.

"What do you mean?" Cole asked back.

"Well if that's what's caused us all to get younger, don't you think it's best to get rid of it in case it does it again?" was her response.

Cole thought on this for a moment before giving his answer,

"I could be wrong but I don't think it's active. Remember when it was glowing and we all touched it? I touched it the longest which might explain why I'm younger than the two of you. But you both still touched it, so that explains why you got younger! The glow's gone now, it's just a rock sitting on a desk."

"So we have a magical rock that made us younger, that no longer has power and is just chilling on your desk. If that's what caused all this, what's next?" Darcy questioned.

Cole was left without an answer, he was happy they were narrowing down what caused this, but he didn't know where this would lead them next. There was no information anywhere about people becoming younger, and certainly nothing available to make people older again. He panicked at the thought of remaining this age and having to grow up all over again, but tried to hide his concerns. He knew the twins were experiencing the same thing, and causing a panic wouldn't be productive for any of them.

"Maybe we could get it examined?" Sonia piped in.

"Who would we get to examine it? And how would we explain that it also made us younger?" Darcy shot back.

"We didn't report finding a meteorite, right? Maybe there's others out there that this is happening to! We just need to find someone to examine it and maybe they can figure it out!" Cole began to get excited. He stood up and walked over near Sonia and began typing into her computer. She stared at him as he typed, admiring his idea and smiling.

"Here we go!" he pointed to the screen, "there's an exhibition at the planetarium this weekend. We can go there and show the meteorite to someone, they'll be excited to see something from space, and might even examine it for us!"

The three began smiling, now that they had a plan to get some sort of answers for the first time since this began.

"Now all we have to do is survive another round of school!" Darcy smirked at the two.