Too Short

Ignorance is Bliss

United We Stand…

Free to a Good Home

Humble Games Voting!

Hopefully you all remember The Humble Games, which I’m playing one of the characters in. It’s been on hiatus for a while now, but there was just a new chapter posted a few days ago, and now the first round of voting has begun! So, go check it out. I don’t want to say who I’m playing so I don’t possibly sway the votes one way or the other, but I’m hoping you guys do vote. And enjoy!

Act Like A Baby…

Placement

Detention

Alisa’s Adventures in the Diaper Dimension – Chapter 40

Chapter 40 – Which Dreamed It?

Alisa had been staying away from the AB/DL message boards since she’d gotten back, not feeling any great need to relive bits and pieces of her adventure in the stories there, but as she got more distance from it, she found herself checking them every now and then, catching up on what had been going on. She’d never been a particularly active member of the community, however she did follow a few artists and authors, and it was nice to see what they had been up to during her partially self-imposed exile.

She hadn’t expected to come back to any big news, since there was so rarely any of that of any real consequence on the boards, and she wasn’t disappointed. Even so, she was pleasantly surprised to see that a new AB diaper had come out, a particularly cute one, extra thick one, covered in infantile designs. Even in the pictures, she could tell that they weren’t nearly as cute as any of the ones she’d worn in the diaper dimension, but they were better than any of the other diapers she’d seen in the real world. They’d gotten some good reviews, and the site selling them was running a special on them since they were new, so she took a chance on them. The best part about them, however, was the fact that it wasn’t just diapers – there were also training pants, offered for both boys and girls.

Alisa wasn’t sure she had ever seen pull-ups designed especially for ABs before, so it was an exciting find for her, especially considering how much she hated her current brand. She couldn’t find as much information about them, but she was more than happy to order a package of them anyway, even if they were more expensive. She wasn’t sure if she would wear them to work or not – they were probably more absorbent, since there didn’t seem to be much that wasn’t, but they were also pretty clearly not meant as a purely functional incontinence aid. It might be inappropriate, though she did actually need them, and Ms. Farber had basically suggested them… She was debating what she would do about them even before she even hit the Order button.

She was pleasantly surprised by just how quickly they arrived, especially considering she had gotten the cheapest shipping. Curiously, she looked at the return label, a bit shocked to see that they had come from the same city she lived in, from an address that sounded vaguely familiar, although she couldn’t quite place it. It hardly mattered, of course, certainly not as much as the quandary she found herself in as to where it would be proper for her to actually wear them. That, too, wound up being easier to solve than she’d imagined after a close call at another interview that left her pull-up soaking wet, trickling stray urine down her legs as she shook in her boots, praying it wasn’t bad enough for a damp spot to show on camera – luckily that didn’t happen until the van ride home.

The diapers and pull-ups did their best to look like the baby versions, though of course they couldn’t use copywrited characters. Instead, generic cutesie characters danced across the front of the diapers, which had only one surprisingly strong tape on each side, and the training pants had princesses, but not specifically Disney ones. They both had wetness indicators on the crotch, little hearts and stars on the diapers, and crowns and scepters and ponies on the pull-ups. The pull-ups even went the extra mile to act just like the smaller versions of themselves, and produced a cool sensation when wet. The website had said they planned on making some without that, too, to help bring the costs down, but for the moment they were unavailable.

As a whole, they were even higher quality than she had ever expected them to be, and there was no doubt that they were worth the money. The website hadn’t looked all that advanced, so she was a little surprised to see that the packages had QR codes on them, and even more surprised when, curious, she’d scanned them with her phone and been taken to a product registration page, rather than just the normal webpage. She wasn’t sure why anyone would feel the need to register diapers, since she was pretty sure all it would earn them was some extra spam mail, and yet, for the heck of it, she’d done it anyway, thinking that, at the very least, they might notify her when the non-cooling pull-ups were available. She used her AB e-mail, of course, and almost all she got there was already spam, so she doubted it would make too much of a difference. Besides, it wasn’t as if the company didn’t already have her information from her order in the first place.

The pull-ups were definitely thicker than the ones she had been using, though not enough to make them too difficult to hide under her regular clothes. If she weren’t going to be on film, she would have felt comfortable wearing them with just about anything she owned, but she decided it would be best to play it a little safe for now, opting for a longer skirt than normal. They worked wonders, never coming close to leaking, or, as far as she knew, to being shown off inadvertently, although she had to admit that she wasn’t a fan of the cooling. It was much more intense than she’d expected, stopping her mid-sentence the first time she’d felt it. She would definitely switch to the regular kind once they were available, but for the time being, these would do quite nicely.

That afternoon, she sat down at her desk, happy with herself as she checked her e-mail. She was surprised to find several more notifications for comments on her Facebook page, and a little scared to look at them, considering what had happened the last time. Yet, when she went to her page, there was nothing there. “Weird,” she muttered to herself, squirming a little in her desk chair, tugging up on her skirt a little – she had apparently chosen clothes just a little too loose, to make sure that they were baggy enough to cover her trainers. Now that she had spent a little time in them, she felt much more comfortable, and less worried about them showing, making her with she had gone with something just a bit tighter.

She stared at her blank Facebook page for another minute, then, on a whim, decided to refresh it before she closed it. Shockingly, another comment popped up, this one a link to a Youtube video with the simple caption of “lol”. It looked like a regular Youtube link, nothing that seemed likely to give her work computer a virus, so she clicked on it, then immediately switched back to her other tab, cheeks burning, as she saw a video of herself, in the middle of an interview, sucking her thumb. Frantically, she tried to delete the comment from her page, only to get an error message. When she refreshed the page, the comment was gone.

She looked around the office, making sure nobody was watching, then scooted as close to the screen as possible to try to block out any prying eyes, and went back to the video. As it turned out, it was a supercut of all her embarrassing moments, all of her thumbsucking, her accidents, everything. She got more and more mortified the longer she watched, and more furious. This had to be one of the jerks from editing, she knew, or one of her cameramen – the latter seemed even more likely as she saw the last clip, an off-kilter shot of her the day before, getting out of the van after the interview with a wet spot on her pants.

Furious, she sent Ms. Farber an e-mail with the video’s url, then stomped to the woman’s office. “This is completely unprofessional!” she raged as she made Ms. Farber watch the video. “Someone in the office is trying to humiliate me! It’s not fair!”

“I’m very sorry this happened, dear,” Ms. Farber told her calmly. “I promise you, I will look into it and make sure to take the proper disciplinary action.”

“You’d better,” Alisa pouted.

“You’re new, I’m sure this is just hazing,” Ms. Farber reassured her. “Still, they certainly should not have posted this in a public place like that. I’ll see what I can do about getting it taken down, all right?”

Alisa nodded, thanked the woman, and, not knowing what else to do, left the office. She couldn’t stand to look at her co-workers, however, and most of her work was done anyway, so she left, driving off to try to calm herself down. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but found herself pulling into an electronics store. She’d put off buying a new TV for a while, even almost considered staying without one, but that was just the sort of extravagant purchase she needed to make herself feel better. At least then she could watch herself, remind herself that, despite her little problems, things were working out, and maybe, eventually, she could look back on her trip to the other world and say that it was for the best. Her job was better, at least, and she was sure that, after enough time, all that hypnosis that had been used on her would wear off, and things would go back to normal.

Indeed, it was nice to watch herself on the news that evening, curled up in one of her new diapers – after being sure to empty her bladder so she wouldn’t wet it right away when she attached the tapes – and her nice, comfy pajamas, proud of herself for making it through her segment without any incidents, mostly. She did catch the moment that she had her accident, and watched herself cower down a little, blushing, but she was sure nobody else could tell exactly what was going on there. Once the news was over, she flipped through the channels, since she had never heard of the next show on her network, and it didn’t sound all that interesting. She’d canceled her cable when she’d first gotten back, since she had no TVs, which left her with only a few options, none of which had anything that seemed worth watching, so, rather than sitting around and continuing to fume about the Youtube video, she went to bed early yet again.

That night, however, she didn’t stay asleep. She woke up a few hours later, feeling confused as she glanced outside her window and saw that it was still dark. She tried for a while to get back to sleep, but when that didn’t work, she wandered back out to her living room, grabbing a banana for a midnight snack before turning the television back on. While she didn’t enjoy insomnia, she saw it as a sign that her sleeping patterns might finally be going back to normal, a good sign that she was right, and everything else would eventually work out, back to how it used to be. She was also grateful for her impulse buy that day, to keep her entertained until she could drift off again, even if it did have only a few channels to offer at the moment.

After flipping through a few sets of commercials and an infomercial, she wound up back at her own network. She wasn’t expecting anything much better, but she did have to admit she was curious as to what the channel actually showed, other than the news. It probably wasn’t the best time to find out, she knew, yet given her other options it would just have to do. It was in the middle of a commercial break at the moment, so she cuddled up on the couch to wait through it, hardly paying attention to the shots of teenagers running around until the ad reached the end, flashing up a picture of a package of the diapers she’d just bought.

She sat up slightly, surprised. She’d never seen a diaper like those advertised except on the internet, and even there only among the diaper boards. It was definitely a strange, bold move, but then, she reasoned, the commercial had mostly just focused on people doing normal things, not emphasizing what it was about until the end, and not even mentioning the little design details that made them so desireable among her community. Plus, since it was still just a local network – though Ms. Farber talked all the time about their plans to expand – and the diapers were made somewhere near there as well, perhaps that was why they were getting some air time. Still, it was a bit strange.

But nowhere near as much as what came on the screen next. As soon as she heard the music, a cold chill ran through her body. It couldn’t be… Could it? She was curious, but at the same time, she didn’t want to know, started lifting her remote to change the channel, only to feel her hands grow clumsy, dropping the remote as a very familiar image popped on screen, making her begin sucking her thumb reflexively, drawn in, not so much by the actual story, but by the hypnotic messages she knew the thing was swarming with. She whimpered, unable to help herself, trying to work out how it could be here, what it could mean, at least until the calming effect of her finger in her mouth and the show numbed her enough that she stopped thinking about much of anything.

“Did you use your diapers, boys and girls?” Oliver asked her from the screen.

“That’s what good girls and boys do!” Naomi was eager to add. “You know what else is fun? Bouncing!” The cartoon characters on the television began jumping up and down, and, like a puppet, Alisa felt her body sitting up, settling onto her padded bottom with a messy squish as she realized the consequences of her thumb-sucking, and then, unable to stop herself, begin to bounce up and down. She could feel her mess spreading all through her diaper, covering every inch of her skin down there as she tried futilely to stop herself, feeling both ridiculous and scared at the same time. At least in the other dimension, when this sort of thing happened, she had always had someone else to help her change – here, on the rare occasion she’d messed on accident, she’d always been careful not to move around too much if she could help it to make cleaning up easier. That wasn’t going to be possible this time, obviously.

“Wasn’t that fun?” Oliver inquired at last, as that segment ended, leaving Alisa to settle into the couch, disgusted, yet relieved. “It’s a good thing mommy or daddy is there to clean you up, isn’t it?”

“What if they don’t have a mommy or daddy?” Naomi asked, eyes wide. “That would be so sad!”

“That is sad!” Oliver agreed. “It’s a good thing the nursery is almost done! Then they can go there to be taken care of!”

“Yay!” Naomi jumped in the air. “That’s great!”

Alisa’s stomach churned. They couldn’t mean… that… kind of nursery… Could they? She had a very bad feeling about all of this, and it was only made worse as the episode ended and the credits flashed by. She was sure she saw Bremer Enterprises on there, but since she didn’t have any cable, she was also out of a DVR, so she couldn’t rewind to check for herself. There was no way to miss the very last image, however – the logo for the NOW network, the one from the front of the building she went into every day, the letters rotating, then sliding down into a line, more letters sliding out of each of them to reveal the full name. Naomi and Oliver World.

Finally free of the hypnotic effect of the show, Alisa managed to yank her thumb free and hop off the couch, that bad feeling growing as she toddled over to her desk, shuffling through the papers there to find her last pay stub, and her notebook from her old job, then made her way to the kitchen, grabbing the box the diapers had come in, holding the stub against the return address label. Had she been back in the diaper dimension, she knew exactly what she would find – she wasn’t entirely sure what it meant that she still found it anyway. The two addresses matched up. The same place that owned her network also made those diapers, and they both just happened to be at the same address as Dr. Bremer’s lab.

This was wrong, there was no doubt about that. Whether she had created a whole new dimension with the device, or she’d brought back part of the diaper dimension with her, things were not as they should be. She suspected it was the first option, since the NOW network was a little older than her arrival back in this world, at least until she remembered that Selena had mentioned Vera Bremer had found some new spot to use as a testing ground. Either way, whether this was an old or a new universe, she had brought this here.

And, as she found out a moment later, she was caught in its trap just as much as the other unsuspecting citizens. Because when she looked back over at the television, she saw herself. At first, she thought it was the Youtube video, being broadcast for some reason, since it was showing her old pull-ups failing her time and time again, but cut into the images of her at work were videos of her at her apartment. Chills began to run down her spine as she saw herself opening the package of diapers just that morning, her letting the new pull-ups snap into place, and then her accident during the interview that day. Then a picture of the pull-ups, with the website address, flashed on screen.

They had made her into a spokeswoman for their diapers, without even telling her, and what was even more disturbing was that they had to have done it by having hidden cameras in her apartment. She didn’t know how many there were, or where they are, but just the thought of them made her skin crawl, made her feel violated. She’d thought she was safe, finally, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

She wanted to change, yet after seeing those pictures of her here, she wasn’t about to, not yet. She rushed to her bedroom, pulling out a suitcase and beginning to throw clothes into it, heart hammering away in her chest. Her cell phone rang, but she was too busy thinking to even consider answering. If Dr. Bremer was behind this, what did that mean? Was it the same Bremer she had interviewed, or had she been taken over by the consciousness of the Bremer from the diaper dimension? Had that Bremer made a deal with this one? Or, if this was a whole new world, was this a whole new Bremer, created from Alisa’s mind, just as devious as the one from the diaper dimension? She knew the woman was her only ticket home, if this place wasn’t it, but she couldn’t imagine any of those options actually leading to a trip back through the door.

Instead, she just needed to get as far away from here as she could, and try to warn people about what she knew was coming. It seemed unlikely that there would be as many people here drawn to Naomi and Oliver, and the slippery slope of doom they represented, but there were still enough that Alisa knew she couldn’t just let them walk into that danger blindly. She’d have to go into the forums, post some kind of a warning. She thought back to the diapers, and her pull-ups, and that strange cooling sensation they’d caused. In her mind, she replayed the video of herself during that interview. She thought she’d seen herself cower a little, embarrassed, but what if it had been more than that? Quickly, she stripped out of her pajamas and tried on another outfit, finding that, sure enough, despite having fit perfectly the last time she’d worn it. Dr. Bremer had found some way to alter Bianca’s shocking diapers to make the initial effect a little less jarring, while keeping the secondary, much more worrying, one.

She needed to warn people to stay away from those as well. The fact that they were using her, without her permission, to advertise them made her feel even more queasy than it had before. How dare they do this to her? This may be her fault, but that didn’t mean she endorsed it! In fact, she was going to do everything she could do stop it!

Her cell rang again, for what seemed like the hundredth time. Just to shut it up, she picked it up, cradling it against her shoulder as she began to closer her suitcase and leave. “Do you know what time it is?” she asked, annoyed.

“Do you?” asked Ms. Farber’s voice. “Good little girls shouldn’t be up this time of night, especially not watching TV.”

“I know you’re watching me!” Alisa shot back. “Well, watch this, bitch!” She stuck out her middle finger, circling it around her head since she wasn’t quite sure where the cameras were. “Well, guess what? I quit! And you had better stop playing that commercial of me, or I will sue your pants off!”

“You will do no such thing,” Ms. Farber told her simply. “You can’t quit now – you’re about to get your own show. We have the first few episodes already edited and ready to go. It’s a thrilling little tale about a spunky little girl who’s trying to make it in the news world despite a little… handicap. We’re billing it as a mockumentary, though we know the truth about that, don’t we? I think it will be a big it, almost as big as Naomi and Oliver. So why don’t you put down that bag of yours, get yourself in a fresh diaper, and go back to bed. Otherwise, maybe you’ll have to spend your nights at the nursery once that’s up and running.”

“I don’t want your show. I don’t want anything to do with you. I’m getting out of here, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!” Alisa hung up angrily, picking up her suitcase and marching through her apartment, knowing it would be better to get out before the woman found some way to demonstrate how wrong she was about that. She didn’t particularly want to show up at a friend’s place like she was now, in a messy diaper, so she’d probably have to spend the night at a hotel. From there, she could figure out where to go, and what exactly she was going to do.

But the night held one more surprise for her. As soon as she opened the door, ready to head out on her latest adventure, she found her path blocked by something large and metallic. Before she could react, a metal arm shot out, wrapping around her, circling her arms and pressing them against her body, making her drop her suitcase, winding up behind her, at a perfect angle to pull back her already slightly loose skirt and her diaper to give her a check. “What a messy girl,” Robo-Nanny’s mechanical voice observed. The hand continued to hold open the rear of her diaper, as she felt something slide into it, and a moment later she felt a thick goo being pumped into the already messy garment. “We wouldn’t want you to get a rash.”

Alisa opened her mouth, though she wasn’t sure if she was going to scream for her or beg for mercy, only to lose the opportunity to do either as the robot pushed a large pacifier into her open, eager mouth. That hand then reached into Alisa’s pocket and pulled out her cell phone, hitting a button before holding it up to the girl’s ear.

“On second thought,” Ms. Farber said, “maybe your show will be about a spunky little reporter, and the robot caretaker who makes sure she stays in line every minute she’s not at work. How does that sound? Oh, I think it will be a hit. Everybody is going to be so jealous of you, Alisa! They’ll want their own robot… At least until they get it. I’ll see you at the office tomorrow, dear, bright and early.”

Robo-Nanny turned off the phone, then, satisfied that the diaper was filled to the brim, stopped the flow of the goop before picking Alisa up so it could come inside, closing the door behind it. The thing carried her through the house, back to her bedroom, where it stripped off her clothes, put her in a nightshirt, and tucked her snugly into bed. “Night-night, Alisa,” it told her, switching off the lights.

It didn’t leave, however. In the dark, she could see it cleaning up the mess she had made while packing, then going through her clothes, picking out her normal panties and tucking them away inside its mechanical apron. Alisa had a strong suspicion she would never see them again. Once it was done, the robot came to a stop on the other side of the room, facing her bed, watching her. Always watching.

For the first time, she hoped she hadn’t found her way home after all, that she hadn’t doomed the real world to being taken over by Dr. Bremer. Of course, if it wasn’t, it meant she had created a whole new dimension that seemed to exist for that sole reason, while it was possible the same thing was happening back in her home dimension, if that truly had been where Vera was running her tests. Of course, the beauty of alternate dimensions is that she knew that, somewhere, there was a place where this wasn’t happening, where she was free, an adult who perhaps occasionally enjoyed wearing a diaper.

Maybe that version of her would dream about her reality that night, would wish that she could live in a world like this one. Maybe someday, she’d even get that wish granted, to find that it wasn’t as much fun as she’d hoped – or maybe it would be. Maybe that version belonged here as much as Alisa wanted to be there. Maybe one day, she’d find a way back through that door, and this time it would open to that world.

But for now, she didn’t even dare try to make it to her own bedroom door, not wanting to give Ms. Farber any footage of her being spanked by Robo-Nanny for her show, though she had a feeling that wouldn’t last for long. It never seemed to, no matter what world she was in.

The End

Author’s Note: Thanks to everyone for reading, and sticking with this story for so long! It’s my longest so far by quite a bit – by comparison, the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland AND Through the Looking Glass are about 57,250 words long, or about 160 pages of just text. This story is 195 pages, and about 119,400 words. Thank you all for your words of encouragement, and your suggestions, whether I used them or not.

Alisa’s Adventures in the Diaper Dimension – Chapter 39

Chapter 39 – Down the Rabbit Hole

“How long have you been doing this?” Alisa asked, smiling brightly as she gave a look to the camera, waiting for a response. Behind her milled a cheerleading squad who was on their way to a national competition, warming up for practice while she spoke to their captain.

She had to admit, she’d felt a little nervous agreeing to the interview, and even now – it was still difficult to accept that she was back in reality, and that, most likely, the cheerleaders weren’t going to try to diaper her for some strange reason. In the stories, they always seemed to be the bad guys, except for the one team member who wound up in diapers herself, but she wasn’t in one of those stories, not anymore. At least, she was pretty sure she wasn’t.

It was hard to know for sure, of course. Everything had seemed to be normal when she’d arrived, finding herself back in her apartment. The place almost looked as if it had been robbed, since her televisions, microwave, and various other electronics had been dismantled, parts taken from them and made into a variety of strange devices that were strewn around the place with no indication as to what they were meant to do, but that only made her feel a little more certain that she was in the right place. No doubt that was the work of Emily, trying to do God only knew what with the technology available to her. She had been a little scared to touch any of the things the girl had built, at least until she had smashed them all.

Part of her felt a little sad as she’d destroyed them, wondering if they could possibly have been some great new invention to this world, something that would let her earn a fortune – which she would need, considering the voicemails waiting for her from the office, asking where she was, and then finally firing her – but she knew it wasn’t worth the risk to actually test them herself. She might have escaped the other dimension, but another fugitive from it had built them, so there was no telling what they might do, if they were even in working condition. She felt much better once they were out of her apartment, even though it now seemed awfully bare with so many of her electronics gone.

She’d spent the first few hours back terrified that she would be pulled back into the other dimension at any moment as the other her stepped through the door to try to take her place. The fact that she wasn’t made her feel suspicious that she hadn’t wound up in the right place after all, though everything else seemed to be right. She even called Dr. Bremer, claiming she was thanking the woman for the interview – and lying when she said that it would be published soon – just so she could inconspicuously as possible ask if the woman happened to have a twin, and confirm the spelling of her first name, just to be safe. She knew that probably made her look like an idiot, since there weren’t that many ways to spell ‘Astra’, but it seemed less embarrassing than simply asking for the woman’s name straight out. It was also a relief to know that Astra Bremer did exist in this world, even in the off chance it wasn’t Alisa’s, and that she was working on the same thing that the other Dr. Bremers had been.

She was still a bit afraid that she could wind up in the diaper dimension at a moment’s notice, but the longer she managed to stay put, the less it worried her. With everything that was going on, it was certainly possible that the other her had been stopped from walking through the door, maybe even by Emily, who probably wasn’t very happy to find herself back home in a body that was suddenly a couple feet shorter than it should have been, and in a messy pair of training pants. Or the door might only work for one trip before needing its destination recalibrated. She really had no idea, which made her wish she’d stuck around a little longer, to try to find out a little more about it before she went through. She had known that was quite possibly her only chance, however, so she’d had to take it, and take it right then. She hated to think what Emily, brought back into the other Alisa’s body, would have done to her if she’d seen what Alisa had done to her body.

The whole thing had left her feeling rather disoriented, like a very long, very bizarre dream that felt intensely real in the moment, until you look back on it the next morning. Already, parts of it seemed to be slipping away, details muddying when she tried to recall them, forcing her to write as much of it as she could down. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, but it seemed like something too big for her to simply let vanish into the mists of her mind completely. Some days, she suspected that it really had been a dream, some strange hallucination cooked up by Dr. Bremer to mask the fact that her machine didn’t really work.

The only evidence she had to the contrary was in her mind. On the days she felt especially anxious about being replaced by the other her, she found herself unable to stop herself from sucking her thumb, something that, unfortunately, produced the same result here as it had in the other world. She also had to be very careful when she got dressed, or went to the bathroom, as the slightest brush of her hand against the wrong part of herself resulted in an accident – she always had to make sure she used the bathroom before she took a shower. Even though she’d been thrilled to be able to wear real panties again when she’d first gotten home, it wasn’t long before she started wearing pull-up style diapers instead, just to be safe. They were nowhere near as comfortable here, or as thick, and they didn’t do nearly as good a job, but she refused to go back to full-blown diapers all the time.

There were definitely times when she re-thought that decision, however. “Umm… Ma’am?” the captain gave her a strange look, blushing a little empathetically. “I think maybe…”

Despite her experience in the other world, where her actions would have earned her an almost immediate diapering, she still couldn’t help herself from immediately uttering a frustrated, “Not again!” as she looked down at her crotch before the girl could even suggest what she was talking about. Sure enough, there was a wet spot forming on the crotch of her pants there, much to her dismay. The sight of it only frazzled her nerves further, making it all the more difficult for her to get her muscles back under control. By the time she managed it, her bladder was so close to empty that there was almost no point in stopping, though she did it anyway.

Alisa blushed furiously, giving the cut off signal to her cameraman before turning to the cheerleader, trying to hold her hand in front of the wet spot without getting too close to it. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

“It’s all right.” The girl seemed fairly confused by it all, but not at all malicious as she offered, “Let me take you somewhere you can get cleaned up.”

“Thank you,” Alisa nodded, handing over her microphone and grabbing her purse before hurrying after the cheerleader, trying to keep as many of the girl’s squadmates from seeing her as she could as she hustled into the locker room. She always kept a spare pull-up in her purse, since she went through quite a few considering how un-absorbent they were, but she wasn’t sure what she was going to do about her pants.

“Here’s a towel… I don’t have any spare clothes, or I’d let you borrow some,” the girl she’d been interviewing minutes before worried. “Uh… Why don’t you get cleaned up, and I’ll see what the school nurse has that you can use?”

Before Alisa could protest, the girl was gone, leaving her there in her wet pants. She was moments away from being discovered by a much meaner cheerleader than the captain, and if that didn’t happen, she was sure the school nurse would be along, waiting for her after her shower with a thick diaper, and quite possibly a thermometer to see if she was sick, and a paddle to use on her if she wasn’t, and had just peed her pants because she was a lazy little brat. Then the cheerleaders would adopt her as their mascot, taking her to the competition with them in her own version of their uniform, one with a much shorter skirt that showed off her thick, thirsty diapers, a little red peeking out from beneath them from where they’d had to punish her for saying she didn’t want to go on TV like that with the rest of the team…

But her quick shower went rather uneventfully, and when she came out, there was a black skirt – not even particularly short, just a bit old looking – and even a pair of underwear waiting for her. She slipped on another one of her thin, all but useless diapers, then put the panties on over it before getting into the skirt, reasoning that it would help mask what she was wearing in case of a strong burst of wind that might come as she walked back out onto the field in the middle of practice to continue her interviews.

There was no wind. None of the other cheerleaders seemed to think of her as anything more than another adult as she spoke to them – in fact, most of them seemed more scare of her than she was of them. Certainly none of them seemed like they were going to try to track her down and treat her like the pant-wetting baby she had acted like. The captain, having had a little time to process what had happened, seemed a little more bemused once Alisa finished her interview with her, and she had no doubt the girl would get a good laugh out of it with her friends later, but it was pretty clear that, in this world, nothing more was going to come of it. It was quite a relief, and, though she hated to admit it, a little disappointing at the same time.

“Boss wants to see you,” she was told almost as soon as she stepped out of the news van once they were back at the NOW network. Alisa winced a little, but it was hard to be surprised after what had happened. She knew her cameraman had caught at least a little of the accident, probably even before the cheerleader had, and of course he hadn’t bothered to tell her, the jerk.

“Thanks,” Alisa sighed, dropping her things off at her desk before making her way to the boss’s office, knocking once before opening the door to find Ms. Farber seated inside.

It still took her by surprise sometimes, seeing the woman’s face. The first time it had happened, she’d wet herself right then and there, and it had taken a valiant struggle to keep her thumb out of her mouth – as soon as she’d gotten home, she’d spent most of the night sucking it, trying to calm herself down, telling herself that she wouldn’t take the job even if it was offered. It was only the fact that the other her had been on TV that had inspired her to even try to get a job at the new network, since the newspaper refused to take her back after she’d vanished for no reason or warning for more than a week.

Scary as that first encounter had been, it had also helped her to remember that her trip to the other dimension wasn’t a dream, probably. There was the possibility that she had seen Ms. Farber’s picture in the paper before she left, or even seen her on television, but she had no recollection of that. And yet, here she was, very clearly not the same one from the other world since she was just normal sized, only an inch or two taller than Alisa, and hadn’t once tried to drag Alisa to some back alley surgeon to take away her muscle control.

By the time the job offer actually came, she was desperate enough to give it a try, and she had to admit that she was very glad she had. The real Ms. Farber was actually a very nice person, and very understanding about Alisa’s little quirks. Alisa was still somewhat nervous with her new job, and hadn’t managed to make it through her first couple stories without sucking her thumb for a moment or two, and today wasn’t the first leak that had been caught on camera. Ms. Farber was always willing to cut around that footage, however, letting Alisa review what was going to air before actually broadcasting it. Of course, that meant Alisa was out of the running when it came to reporting live, but, for now, she was all right with that, since that would be an awful lot of pressure.

“Look, Alisa,” Ms. Farber said, once she’d invited the woman to take a seat, “I like you. I do. But I really think you need some help. I know a very good therapist who I’m sure can help you with your oral fixation. She used hypnotism to help me quit smoking, and I haven’t touched a cigarette in three years.”

“No,” Alisa told her firmly. “No hypnosis.”

Ms. Farber looked like she wanted to push it, only to relent. “All right. But something’s going to have to be done eventually. You should’ve been back half an hour earlier.”

“I know,” Alisa looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“At least go to the doctor, make sure you don’t have some infection or something. And, I hate to say it, but… Have you thought about, you know, protection?”

Alisa blushed. “Well, I…”

“I’m just saying,” Ms. Farber shrugged. “We barely had time to get the story edited together.”

“It already went out?” Alisa squeaked. It wasn’t like it mattered that much, since, by then, she trusted Ms. Farber and her editing team, but she still liked to watch it anyway, especially since it was the only chance she had, having still not replaced the TVs Emily had dismantled in her apartment.

“We didn’t have a choice, it was too close to air time,” Ms. Farber told her. “I’m sorry, but you didn’t give me a choice. Do you want to see it now?”

“No, it’s okay,” Alisa sighed. She just hoped that there weren’t too many people who noticed her pants switching to a skirt partway through the interview, or that, at least, they assumed it was filmed on different days or something. “It’s my fault. Thanks for trying to help, it’s just…”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re just lucky you’re so cute. Get out of here.” Ms. Farber waved her out, dismissing her to scurry back to her desk and start packing up to head home. Before she left, she did one last check of her e-mail, and was pleased to find that someone had posted on her Facebook fan page. She was still new enough that she rarely even got any visitors, so a comment was enough to cheer her up after her little incident.

At least, it was until she actually loaded the page and her sole comment blinked to life in front of her. “Maybe you should do a story on a daycare next,” it suggested. “They could give you some potty training tips.”

Quickly, she erased it, cheeks burning as she looked around, making sure nobody had been looking over her shoulder. She wished she had looked at how long ago it had been posted before getting rid of it, but she hoped it hadn’t been long enough for anyone but her to actually see it. She had been sure to open the perpetrator’s profile in another tab before deleting the comment, but the name didn’t ring any bells, the profile picture was a shot of flowers, and the rest of the profile was set to private.

It hardly mattered, especially now that it was gone, yet it still shook her up a little. She suspected one of the cheerleaders wasn’t as innocent as she’d suspected, but she restrained herself from looking up the full squad roster – it wasn’t like she was going to go hunt some teenager down because of one comment. Still, it was enough to make her hurry home and get herself into a proper diaper for a good thumb-sucking session to try to forget all about it, curling up on her bed and falling fast asleep before the sun had even finished setting.