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Chapters 5 and 6
by Sofia Hammerstein
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'Little Hope' continues the story of Stacy's journey from 'Exchanged.' Stacy is a young college student who chose to travel to a new dimension to study their advanced computing technology at a prestigious university as an exchange student. Stacy thought he knew what he was getting into when he traveled, having visited before with his family and pre-arranged a sort of Amazonian foster family to take him in. Shrinking more than he had on his previous visit, he finds himself the size of a tiny Amazonian baby instead of the near Betweener size he had hoped to be. A further misunderstanding on his gender due to his name resulted in the need for a radical change to make him match the gender the university believed him to be, to maintain his scholarship. Having survived the initial CARES exam, now she and her adopted parents work to make sure she's ready to begin orientation at Emerson University. Can Stacy survive this new world? (Story set in the Diaper Dimension)
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Available for Purchase as
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 Kindle Book Priced $5.95 |
Please visit Sofia's Author Page |
The Legal Stuff: Exchanged © 2017-2024 By Sofia Hammerstein
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
Chapter 5: Setting Up
I PLAYED A little more with the watch as we traveled home. Since I had walked some steps, I now had some coins available to buy some food and toys for my pet. Really the game could be the ultimate distraction if I wasn’t careful… It was just the kind of casual game that actually seemed appropriate to the Amazons for me to be playing and, for some twisted reason, actually interested me!
We arrived home, and Amanda sat me down on my feet in the garage, she handed me a bag to carry, and I followed behind her. She made several more trips out to the car for my supplies before she helped me take them upstairs. As I climbed the steps by myself, I had to be careful with the gigantic bag I carried not to spill it all over the place!
“Hmm… not sure where we’re going to put all of this for you… See what you can find space for?” Amanda suggested.
“Okay,” I told her before adding, “Can you change me?”
She smiled at me, “Sure… you have no idea how hard I’ve been trying all day not to baby you. Do you want to do it yourself?”
I squirmed for a moment internally before saying, “You do a better job!”
She smiled at me, “Thanks for the compliment,” before picking me up quickly and laying me down on the changing table. The diaper was changed in record speed, though, and I was sat back down on the floor. “I’m going to go finish setting up your phone, then I’m going to figure out dinner. After that, I want to go to one more store tonight that I think might have a tablet that would be a good tablet for us to put your textbooks on.”
“They didn’t have those at Motherboards?” I asked.
She looked down at me and shook her head, “Melon Corp won’t sell their state-of-the-art ultra-thin tablets through other stores. They do the phones for more market saturation, but you have to go to them for anything else. They have some amazing tablets with flexible screens, but they don’t let other places become authorized dealers. So I’ll have to go to one of their nearby stores later. They’re not exceptionally little friendly, though… so I’m going to go when Fred gets home.”
“Umm… you can’t go now?”
She shook her head, “You’re an adopted little; other than you being at school if I leave you alone, it’s like a parent leaving their three-month-old baby home alone – I assume that’s against the law in your dimension?”
I nodded and then thought about the schedule I’d gotten this morning. There were a few breaks between classes on my schedule, “But what about when I’m not in classes…?”
She smiled at me, “You’ll come to hang out with your mommy in her office or with Megan.”
“Oh…” I said with my face reddening. “And if those don’t work?” I added worriedly.
“They will… but you also have my parents as an option too. In fact, I think my dad wants you to go to his place at least once a week.”
I smiled at that, “I like your dad.”
“You made me furious this weekend, but you really impressed him. I suspect that may be where you end up several afternoons. Remind me to actually look at the schedule with you and Daddy later. We need to make sure we have everything lined up.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to smile. Getting used to the concept of no privacy was something I thought I had done, but it wasn’t until this latest revelation that I really thought about the fact I truly had no independence anymore. One of the first independent things I remember growing up was staying home by myself!
“You also might be able to make some little friends and be with them in time… If they’ve not been adopted, they can be seen as your babysitters according to the law.”
I blushed, “That’s embarrassing!”
“Well, I can have a thirteen-year-old come watch you too…” she said with a smirk.
“Don’t you have something to do?” I whined.
She leaned down and hugged me before tapping my diapered butt lightly; “I really do love having you here. I promise we’ll minimize embarrassing you, but you have to know the facts here. I think it’s better than surprises, don’t you?”
I sighed, “I guess.”
“See what you can put away in here. Leave some room in your backpack for the tablet I’ll go pick up later – you won’t need much as those are incredibly thin. Make sure you keep at least a few spare diapers in there at all times too… Otherwise, someone might provide one for you - and that could mean anything!”
I nodded and got to work. I had bought a couple of desk organizers that I spread out on my desk. I sat several pens, pencils, and highlighters in each. The pens and pencils were still a little bit too big for comfort, but more like what a full-sized pencil had been to me in second grade - as opposed to an infant trying to hold one like the Amazons felt like. I stuffed my bag with more than enough pens, pencils, notebooks, etc., to make sure I could make it through classes for a while. Once everything was in there, I worked to put binders neatly on my desk and in a bookshelf that had previously held some toys in it. I moved the toys over on top of the toy box that I had not really dug into and noted I really should just, for curiosity’s sake, look into it sometime. ‘Probably just boring baby toys, though?’ I thought to myself.
I went back to my computer desk and had just emptied the last of the supplies when Amanda walked in and sat down on the floor cross-legged next to me and motioned for me to come to sit in her lap. “Here’s your phone,” she told me with a smile.
“Thanks!” I told her.
“Now, there are some ground rules with this phone.” I groaned internally and waited for more stifling rules, “You will have to give it back to me at bedtime each night. It doesn’t ever go into your crib with you for naps, either.”
I just shrugged and was hoping that would be it, “My parents used to make me leave mine on the counter in the kitchen at bedtime, so that’s nothing really new.”
She smiled at me; “also, you aren’t to talk to strangers on it without letting me know first. It is mainly for you to call me your daddy, Megan, or grandparents. If you make friends, that’s fine, and you can give them your number, but I still want to know who they are so I can look into them.”
“I would say you’re being overprotective, but given everything I’ve seen here, I think that’s reasonable,” I allowed.
“Good girl,” she told me, “remember you are here to go to school. If your grades fall below a three-point-oh, I’ll be taking it back then too.”
I nodded, “I’ll be on a one-way trip to drooling baby in that case… I understand.”
She hugged me, “I was going to make dinner, but I got distracted with your phone. It’s so small to me, but against your hands, it looks huge!”
I laughed, “You couldn’t stand in the store earlier either,” I pointed out.
She laughed, “There’s a reason why we don’t build spaces meant for littles very often!”
“Actually, it’s a shame you don’t because I could actually reach most things in there.”
“Well, you’re only about a foot-and-a-half from being the average height of a Little. It’s a lot different than being five feet short like you are for our stuff.”
I nodded, “It’s weird that you have the two cultures like you do… It seems so improbable.”
She squeezed me, “Anyway, how do you feel about Chinese food?”
“Wait, Chinese? Does that mean you have a China here?”
She looked down at me with a bemused face, “Yes, we have a China here… of course, what we consider Chinese food isn’t really much like they eat, but it is tasty.”
“Well, that parts the same for us… Are they any better with the treatment of littles?”
“Actually, they are… Their people are much shorter on average than us – they tend to be more Littles and inbetweeners than full-size Amazons.”
“Hmm…”
“So, does that work for din-din?”
“Sure.”
“What do you like?”
“Do you have General Tso’s in this dimension?”
“Never heard of it?”
“Kind of like sweet and sour but with spicey chile added?”
“Oh, we call that Colonel Gao’s.”
“That works for me,” I told her.
She squeezed me, “Okay then, I’ll go order dinner, and you can play with your new phone.”
“Thank you for getting it for me,” I told her as she scooted me off her lap, and I stood back up.
“You’re very welcome, Stacy,” she said with a smile.
I watched as she closed the gate to my room, then found a beanbag chair in the corner and sat down on it to get comfortable as I played with my new toy. I quickly became enthralled by the interface of the phone. I knew it wasn’t the highest tech from this dimension, but even their lowest level was so far above ours that I was in heaven! The voice recognition was absolutely flawless, and I saw that Amanda had programmed in her and Fred’s numbers as ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy.’ I noticed there were entries for ‘Granny’ and ‘Gramps,’ as well as ‘Auntie Megan.’ I was not overly disappointed that Cassie and Chloe’s numbers were not included there!
I played around with the calendar for a few minutes and walked over to my desk, where I had left my schedule. I put each class in as a recurring event and the room numbers. The phone was impressively smart and quickly cross-referenced a university directory and placed a map to each building with each entry! “Cool,” I breathed. Somehow, it intuitively discovered they were classes and asked me if I wished to auto silence my phone during those! I clicked accept because I could only imagine the looks that I would get if my phone went off in a class. ‘Probably get a spanking,’ I admitted darkly to myself.
I tried going to an app store and found myself blocked from making purchases by parental safeguards. ‘Grrr…’ I grumbled and looked through a few more apps that had been installed before Amanda came in and said, “Dinner will probably be here soon; why don’t we wash your hands and go downstairs?”
“Okay,” I said. I held onto my phone, walked over to Amanda, and made the universal ‘pick me up’ sign.
“You want me to carry you?” She asked, almost surprised.
“Well, your stairs are pretty tall,” I admitted. “Plus… I’m not going to say I like being treated like a baby… but cuddling is kind of nice?” My face turned bright red.
Her face broke into a broad smile, and she said, “Well, if you insist!” She picked me up and squeezed me into a hug before placing me on her hip and carrying me downstairs.
I was carried to the kitchen sink, and she held me up as I washed my hands in the water there before she placed me in my highchair. She took my phone and put it on the table out of my reach. She hadn’t buckled the harness yet when the doorbell rang, “Stay there!” she told me.
I nodded and looked at the buckles while she went to pay for the food. I was finally able to work out the trick for opening them and thought that I would have to find a chance to try it later. She walked to the door, and I sat still, thinking that maybe she would leave the harness off altogether if she felt she could trust me. Just as she was closing the door, I wondered where Fred was before remembering he said he would be late tonight with his surgeries. She turned around and sat the plastic bag containing our food on the table, and turned her attention back to me.
“Silly me leaving you without your safety harness done!”
“You know it’s okay to do that?”
She shook her head, “Not really… If LPS were to come in, they would have a major problem. I need to make sure we always buckle you up even here at home.”
I sighed as she tightened the straps up when she was done and then placed the tray in front of me. She then velcroed on an adorable butterfly-covered bib to cover my torso. I played with the edge of it that went past my waist and onto my lap. A crumb pocket was at the bottom and seemed unlikely to be effective as it was probably a year’s worth of Amazon growth too long for me.
“So cute!” She quickly snuck a picture of me with her phone.
I rolled my eyes at her and sighed.
Chapter 6: Daddy's Girl
I WATCHED AMANDA grab one of the special toddler plates for me, and she placed a large amount of what looked like General Tso’s chicken to me on it as well as some steamed rice. Then, she dug around through the drawers and said, “Here, you want chopsticks?”
I smiled at her as she presented me with two options. One looked like what I had once seen online as being a training pair of chopsticks with a connection at the end and a little set of loops to keep your fingers in the right place. The other set was just shorter plastic chopsticks with cute characters on the top couple inches. I pointed to the ones without the training device.
“You sure?”
I nodded, “My friends and I taught ourselves long ago!”
She smiled and handed them to me, “Here… at least if you fail, you have a bib on!”
I groaned but eagerly began digging into the chicken. It had a fair amount of ginger in it… that was different, but other than that, it tasted ‘normal’ to me. “Make sure you chew!” She reminded me as she got her own plate and dished herself up.
For several minutes though, I noticed she just watched me and stared, “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I think you are the first Little I’ve ever seen able to use them. I think you use them better than the forks I’ve given you!”
I shrugged, “Kind of feels easier to adjust my grip with these than deal with the oversized utensils?” I told her before going for some rice. I was glad to see it was good sticky rice that I could grab chunks of easily. I noted, though, that the rice grains here were also twice the size they should be. “I can’t believe that even your rice is bigger!”
She laughed, “I really would love to see your world. I wonder if we went through if we would shrink to your heights?”
I shrugged, “Who knows? I’m sure they’ve got to have done some experiments, but I don’t really know of any?”
“I’m pretty sure Doctor Bremer and her colleagues have done some, but I don’t know how much. With you being as small to us here… Well, I think the biggest research has been in how to get you to come here and be babies!”
I sighed, “Well, they ensnared me to come,” I admitted.
There was an awkward silence for several minutes while we ate. I was just deciding how to break the silence when the phone rang, “Hello?” Amanda said as she stood up and answered the cordless phone off the counter.
I watched as she spoke with the other person, “No, we don’t have any plans tomorrow… But, I suppose we could; I’m kind of on leave right now?” I watched her facial expressions change several times from interested to looking concerned, “Well, I don’t think I’ll be able to find a sitter by then would be the only problem…” she added. “Oh, that’s right, I don’t think I’ve seen you since we adopted! Yes, I’ve got an adorable little girl who’s looking at me like I’m crazy right now…” she winked at me. “You’re sure you’re okay with that?”
I sat there, becoming both curious and nervous at the same time. I realized I had an overwhelming need to pee, so I let that out into the diaper while Amanda continued to make me wonder what was going on. “Okay, we’ll come by and take a look at it tomorrow. I’m glad to hear you have managed to get it up and running! It’ll mean a lot of advancements soon!” She paused, “Sounds good, see you tomorrow!”
She looked at me and smiled, “That was one of my colleagues, Doctor Babbage, in the computer engineering department. They just finished the new mainframe and prototyping lab project we’ve been putting together. I assume you’d like to see it?”
I smiled, “They’ll let me?”
“Well, they probably think you’ll be just hanging from my breast or something the entire time?”
I made a face, “What?!?”
“Just kidding,” she said as she came over and tickled me, “Ooh, we better change that diaper soon after din-din, huh?”
“Back on the topic?” I sighed.
“If you dress in a school uniform, you might be more likely to be allowed to play a Little with the new toys?”
I smiled, “Okay, now you’re talking!”
She smiled, “Why don’t you finish your dinner, and then we’ll go for a swim in a bit?”
I nodded and ate for another few minutes before I felt full. Amanda seemed to sense that because she gathered my plate and chopsticks. She then returned to wipe my hands with a baby wipe and sat me down on the ground. Right as she did so, I felt my innards telling me something and realized my vacation from poopy diapers was at an end. I groaned and pushed the mess into the diaper with way more effort than I liked in such an exposed place.
My grunting made it obvious what I had done, and she said, “Uh-oh, someone made a stinky, huh?”
I nodded.
“Give me just a minute, baby, to put away the leftovers, and then we’ll go change you.”
I patiently waited while I could feel the mess pulling down on an already heavily soaked diaper. I watched as Amanda moved about the kitchen without any hurry before she came over and gingerly picked me up. I laid my head on her shoulder as she carried me up for the much-needed diaper change. I sat still as the diaper was ripped open, and I wrinkled my nose at the smell even though it didn’t seem to bother her for some reason. It must not have been too bad of a mess because she had me cleaned up pretty quickly.
“You can’t go straight in the water right now, but let’s get your swimsuit on,” she told me.
She stood me up on the table and helped me step into the swim diaper and then another one-piece swimsuit that seemed a bit baggy still. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m thinking for swimsuits; we may need to look at the newborn sizes, sweetie.”
I looked at her in shock, “I wouldn’t fit in them… would I?”
She shrugged, “You might. You really have a weird set of body proportions. The rest of your outfits mostly fit with the three-month size, but I think you’re skinnier than you should be?”
“That is the first time in my life I think I’ve ever heard that,” I shook my head as she sat me on the ground.
She laughed as she fussed with a swim cap over my hair, “Why don’t you stay in here while I go change into my own suit.”
“Okay,” I told her.
I watched her leave through the gate and looked down at my watch at the time. It showed that it was only a little after six. So I decided to fulfill my curiosity from earlier and peaked into the toy box. I saw a mixture of dolls, stuffed animals, giant Duplo Blocks, Little People toys, and a fake set of cooking stuff. I shook my head, closed the box, and walked over to my computer.
I had just sat down when Amanda returned and said, “Shall we?” while opening her arms up to me. I enjoyed the warmth of her body against mine, as I mainly felt naked still in the swimsuit. ‘Ironic considering it covers more of a percentage of my body than my swim trunks did!’
She put some sunscreen on me outside before setting me down in the water. I trod water for a few moments and watched as she moved to the shallow end and lay back to read a book. I caught the title, ‘Emerald Princess,’ before I decided to start doing some laps. I had probably done about ninety non-stop when I finally began to tire and rolled onto my back. Just as I did so, I realized that Fred was now standing next to me and squealed.
“When did you get home?” I squeaked as I righted myself and treaded water.
“About five minutes after you started swimming. Amanda was glad to see me because it meant she could go run to the store for your tablet.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing that she left, and I never even realized it.
“You get very focused on what you’re doing, don’t you?”
I nodded, “It’s nice sometimes… other times, it’s kind of bad because I don’t know what’s going on around me.”
He nodded, “You are a lot like Amanda there… I mean Mommy…” he said with a sigh. “Are you done swimming?”
I thought for a moment and asked, “Ten more laps? So it’ll make an even one-hundred?”
He laughed, “Go ahead.”
Knowing he was probably hoping to do more than stay in the pool with me all night, I quickly began the laps and tried to power through them faster. I did them pretty quickly and then swam over to him, “Okay, I’m done.”
He picked me up out of the water and carried me to the ground outside of the pool, and sat me down on my feet, “Let’s find your towel,” he told me.
I looked over at the lounge chairs and saw a small pink towel that I knew had to be mine. So I walked over there and grabbed it to begin toweling myself off. Fred watched me and smiled, “Let me know when you think you’re dry enough!” while he dried himself with his own towel.
When I was done, I wrapped the towel around my body and said, “I’m good.”
He opened the gate and led me back to the house then, and I reveled in the fact that I wasn’t being carried or babied right then. I followed him inside the house and walked all the way to the stairs on my own. “You want a lift up the stairs?” Fred asked in his kindly voice.
“Please?”
He picked me up and carried me up the steps and into my room before setting me down on the floor. “Mommy told me you got your tentative class schedule today?”
I nodded, “It’s over here if you want to see it?”
I walked to my desk and handed him the paper printout of my schedule.
“Looks like you’ve got some long days on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?”
I shrugged, “Doesn’t seem any different from high school?” I said.
“You think that now… just wait until you’ve got that many college tests in one day.”
I nodded, “Yeah, that could be kind of rough. I thought the universities tended to stagger which class was which day?”
“Some do. I never really paid attention to Emerson at the undergrad level.”
He handed me the schedule back and said, “Well, your mommy wanted me to give you a bath when we got done swimming… Umm…”
“You’re seriously nervous about giving me a bath after wiping my butt before?” I gave him a smirk.
“Well…”
“Tell you what, you get the bathtub filled for me, and I’ll wash myself?”
He smiled at me, “You won’t tell Mommy?”
I laughed, “As long as you promise to give me some more opportunities for independence every now and then? Of course not!”
I followed him to the bathroom, and I stripped out of my swimsuit while he started the tub filling. I pulled the diaper down last and used a baby wipe he handed me to make sure I was clean. I pretty much figured I had to have peed while in the pool…
“Okay, upsy daisy!” He told me, giving me a lift into the tub. It was filled much higher than it probably should have been for a regular baby, but I enjoyed the water coming up to my chest.
He handed me a soaped-up sponge, and I scrubbed myself from head to toe while he stood off to the side nervously. I reveled in the fact I was able to do something for myself. I also knew that if he wasn’t there, I would have at least used the opportunity to look at my new parts closer. So instead, I said, “Would you please hand me some shampoo?”
I lathered up my hair and then was happy to have him help rinse it out with the showerhead. “Are you good?” He asked me afterward.
I shrugged, “I guess.”
He took that moment then to pull the drain plug and wrapped me in a towel as the water drained. He sat me gingerly on the counter and used the loud blow dryer to get my hair dried. “You did that pretty well,” I told him when my hair was soft and dry.
He smiled at me, “Thanks.”
I was again carried to my nursery, and he quickly diapered me in a regular pamper.
“What do you want to wear for pajamas?”
“How about those?” I suggested pointing to a t-shirt and shorts set…
He handed me the set I pointed at, and I put them on myself. The shirt was purple with pink and green hearts spread around the front with ‘Adorable, Cute, and Cuddly,’ written in a cute font. The shorts were pink, and even though they felt more mature than a onesie, it definitely seemed like they were just as babyish since you could easily see the outline of my diaper through the shorts. When I lifted my arms, just a bit of the shirt rode up, and you could also clearly see the frilly edges of the diaper against my stomach. I sighed, “Thank you,” I told him.
“For what?”
“For not being quite as smothering as your wife.”
He picked me up, “Well if she goes too far, let me know… the Big maternal instinct is kind of crazy when you look at it clinically.”
I nodded, “She’s done a good job reigning it in. I’m just not used to any babying since I was a regular teenager and able to do my own thing back home.”
“What exactly do you miss?” He asked as he carried me downstairs and made himself comfortable in a recliner with me on his lap.
“Well, driving is definitely one thing!”
He laughed, “Even mature Littles don’t drive here, so that’s kind of funny.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really… how would they reach the pedals?”
“Couldn’t you do something like handicap accessible steering controls?”
“I suppose you could, but also think of the danger for the Little. If they got in any accident at all, it would be an instant trip to a nursery. The few free Littles out there are much better keeping their heads down.”
I nodded, “It really is a sad thing.”
“Yes, I agree it is.”
