The next morning Cale’s eyes popped open. The cursor was gone, but on occasion he would see a small gentle white light pulse in the corner of his vision.

  Must be waiting for my soul to grow, he thought. Cale didn’t bother to move and just stared at the ceiling in his room. Yesterday’s events had changed something in him; it was almost like he was finally fully awake. For some reason he knew this feeling wouldn’t last forever, like he was on a timer. So, he started to do some thinking.

  First, he needed to find out what was going on with this weird world. For some reason his baby brain could not remember what had been happening before yesterday. He definitely remembered the picture studio where his butt’s purity was almost lost, and the room where his parents made his forehead boop a ball. Cale had a realization; he had no idea if that was all the same day! He only remembered moments, not the whole time! His concern grew as he realized he wasn’t even sure how old he was right now. He looked down at his hands in hopes of something less sausage-y... and he was sorely disappointed. They were still pretty sausage-like.

  He looked over his body the best he could; to an outside viewer this attempt would look like he was trying to dance while lying on his back. After a few minutes of this nonsense, in which he saw nothing but his feet, Cale figured that he was a few months old, and it would be a few more until he could start crawling around. Well, if this body was human, he wasn’t really sure because his fingers still looked like sausages, his feet were as large as his head, and he couldn’t see his own face. Then he realized with a great panic, he hadn’t even paid enough attention to know what his parents looked like!

  Over the next few months Cale did his best to try and look deeper at the world around him. The first thing he did was look at his parents. Cale decided to focus on what was the same in hopes that it would make the things that were different stick out. They looked very human, but something was weird with their ears, and both of them had large feet like his. He saw his mother had light golden colored hair; and when she stood next to his dad, she was a little shorter, but not by much. She had blue eyes with a human-looking nose and a smile that made Cale’s little baby heart flutter with happiness.

  His father was a black-haired man with a little scar on his nose shaped a little bit like a feather. He had green eyes but one of them seemed to glow a little at times. Cale didn’t get many chances to see his father in detail since his father seemed to be gone a lot. He had once seen his father leave in what looked like a uniform, there was a good chance that his work kept him away for long periods of time.

  After watching his parents more, he determined that there were really only two things he observed that were different than humans on his original world. First were the ears, they looked human, but they could rotate and swivel! Cale was excited to have that feature. What he was not excited about was the other feature, his feet. He had gotten a good look at his parents' feet since he was so tiny. The first thing about them is that they were disproportionately huge, and they had seven toes with the two outer toes being the longest. Cale was not excited for all the potential toe stubbing he would be doing in his life. He wondered if the size of the feet in this world would also partially show how tall he would be. His father wasn’t a giant, at least not from his point of view. He could vaguely recall his father walking normally through doorways and not having to duck. Perhaps this world had softer ground, and larger feet helped their ancestors move about more steadily? He thought, but he didn’t have any actual data so at best he could just guess.

  As Cale tried to observe the world, it was a constant fight between him and his baby brain. For example, there was this one day when they were out playing at the park, and he saw this amazing yellow bird that had a trail of light dancing behind it. But right as he looked at it, his baby brain took over and before he could gain control he had reached down, grabbed a handful of dirt, and stuck it in his mouth. Gross!

  Every day Cale and his baby brain raged on in battle against each other. There were moments in between those battles where the victor got to enjoy the spoils. When Cale was able to win against his baby brain, he would spend it observing the world around him. One time he won a battle right before his parents took him out for a walk. He was fascinated by the strange matchup of display signs on the businesses as they walked down the street. Some looked like a normal old neon sign while others looked like something out of a fairy tale. He noted that something like magic seemed to exist in this world but not everyone used it. He wasn’t sure how that matched up with the cursor he saw or the pulsing light that remained in his vision, but he was going to do his best to figure it out.

  Like most of his victories, this one did not last forever. As his parents walked them up to their house his baby brain finally won, and he caught a whiff of the telltale, and very ripe smell that came along before a large bowel movement. He didn’t bother trying to win this battle.

  ***

  Around the 6th month mark Cale was finally able to win a majority of the battles against his baby brain and stay in control for hours at a time. He was thrilled that he was able to remember everything as he watched his mother work in her home lab. He watched his mother with intensity as he tried to figure out what she was up to. He wasn’t sure what she was doing at the moment, but she had her golden hair tied into a ponytail and was holding this odd circuit board looking thing in her hands. She was slowly dusting it off and making notes of her observations. To Cale it looked like she was studying it, but he wasn’t sure. Then, to Cale’s surprise, he saw his mother take her free hand and out of it came this small stream of pale white light that slowly wrapped around the device she was studying, coiling around it like a snake.

  Cale was enthralled! Is this MAGIC? As far as he could tell it was truly coming from her hand and not from some device. Before he could think about it any longer, Cale’s father came flying through the door into the lab making a complete ruckus and getting in the way of Cale’s observations. He tried to figure out what his dad was saying as he gave him the stink eye but was unable to make out the words. With the way his mother put her work down and sprinted out the door, it made him think something bad had happened.

  His father strolled over to him, picked him up from his chair and brought him into the main living area where Cale saw another woman that looked a lot like his mother. Cale suddenly got a terrible feeling about what was going to happen. Like the feeling you get before lightning strikes; like his now beaten baby brain was laughing at him for having to experience what was going to happen next and it made him shiver.

  The new lady turned to look at Cale in his father’s arms and squealed. She walked up to him with her hands held up in the air with glee and started to make that little weird scrunched up face people make when they see babies. When she got close, she leaned down and started to pinch his cheeks and nose, causing them to become red. Cale wished his baby brain would take back over, but the pain kept his sanity locked as he heard mad baby laughter in the back of his mind. He wasn’t sure the victory had been worth it today.

  Eventually, after a baby eternity, the woman who he assumed was his aunt stopped making a fuss over him and he was set back into his crib. He could feel his baby brain rising to start a new battle, so he quickly thought about his day to preserve what he saw in the garage. It felt like these memories might be lost if he didn’t. He recalled seeing some weird circuit board thing and what looked like Magic! Which had come from… His thoughts paused as the baby brain almost won in that moment. In desperation he thought of the pinching he had received from his aunt, the thought made the baby brain recoil, keeping Cale in charge, but at the cost of keeping the memory of the pinching… Oh that’s right! His mother had some script she used on that circuit board looking thing and it looked like it was coming out of her hand! Cale wanted to keep thinking about that, but his baby brain finally took over his higher thought processes and he quickly fell asleep.

  Today was a beautiful day in the city of Linddaro. The sun was shining, people were shopping, and parks were being enjoyed. However, in one household, a terror had been let loose in the form of a little baby.

  “Get back here! Don’t touch that! Get out from under there! Phil, reinforce that before it falls on us!” were all common phrases in Cale’s place of residence. Cale could finally crawl around, and he was making the most of it. After his last bout of full consciousness, he had decided that waiting around in baby mode was not going to satisfy him. He needed a way to help his soul grow faster and a way to help his brain function like an adult.

  It had taken a while to accomplish this using his baby brain but after a few feedings and the occasional poop, he decided to come up with a plan. First, he needed to make sure his baby body was in shape. He knew that a baby’s bones were not meant to lift weights but what he did remember was that cardiovascular activity helped your brain grow blood vessels faster to keep it powered. He also knew that his soul’s walls were thin and thought that maybe it would help strengthen them somehow. He had no idea what he was doing, but it didn’t matter because he was a baby, and he was bored!

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He decided that he needed some overall goals before he could formulate a plan. His first goal was to get his interface installed, but that couldn’t happen until he had a stronger soul – something he knew nothing about. So, the first thing was to figure out the soul stuff or at least try the soul stuff. He wouldn’t dwell on it if he couldn’t make any progress. The second part of his plan was much easier. He just needed to move his body a lot. Something he knew he could do once he was large enough to crawl. With his goals at the forefront of his mind, Cale fell asleep with a content little grin on his rosy cheeked face.

  After his morning feeding, poo, and cleanup, his mother finally stopped moving him around like a sack of fruit and had him sitting in a chair. He was currently watching her do the dishes, so it wasn’t the most entertaining of things to focus on. Instead, he turned his thoughts toward his plan. The first thing his plan needed was a name, yes, every good plan had a good name… Hmm... Strongest Baby Alive Plan. Nailed it.

  Now the plan needed some details. He knew that his bones could only handle so much weight, so he was going to stick to activities that babies normally did. Crawl, climb, and hold on to things. Of course he couldn’t just crawl on the floor. He would need to combine crawling and climbing and holding into one activity. He would start with the smallest items in the house, climb them, and then move up higher.

  When it came to his soul, he had absolutely no idea as to what he could do to possibly help it get stronger or make the walls thicker, whatever that even meant. The only thing he could really do was try and sense it and go from there. If he was unable to sense his soul, then how was he going to be able to tell if he was doing any good? Since he was currently unable to move due to his newness to life, he focused on trying to feel his soul instead.

  It had taken an unknown number of meditations turning into naps before he finally made any progress. He couldn’t see how his soul looked, but he could tell where it was located in his body. It had a certain weight to it, a presence that he only noticed one day because he fell asleep during one of his attempts to feel his soul. It was at the moment where the brain is on the verge of sleeping yet somehow still lucid. In this almost trance-like state, he could feel something writhing in him, something his whole body instantly recognized as his soul. He had expected it to be in his head, but he found his soul sitting directly in the center of his chest. Relief filled him as he reached a milestone in his plan. Just confirming it existed was a huge relief to him. He was ready to focus on his physical strength, and he was excited to be able to move around.

  It wasn’t long after he learned to sense his soul, that he started to crawl. He had spent the time in between his soul studies planning his crawling paths and climbing routes. There were a few possible routes between the kitchen and living room area that would give him nice long loops to crawl. The living area was partially open and had room for toys. It was a good area to do some rolling and tumbling. The chairs to the table had nice cross beams and supports for him to crawl onto and use like a ladder as well. Those would be the route to the top of the table. His end climbing goal was to get to the top of the kitchen cupboards. He wondered what his mother would think of him if she knew what he was plotting while looking happy in his chair. It didn’t take long for his internal giggles to turn into outward snores. His plans would have to wait until later.

  Diana

  Diana was excited to get back to her research. Though she loved her son, she would admit that a break was needed from the absolute madness that had been occurring in her house over the last couple of months. She knew things would be interesting with her husband in the Ranger Core. His job required him to be gone months at a time surveying the outer wilds and looking for pockets of their people. His job was an important one and it made her very proud.

  He had left a little while after Xavier’s birth, who – by the way – was a perfect little angel, until he wasn’t. When her friends and family had told her to baby proof the house, she hadn’t expected that baby proofing also meant reinforcing the cabinets and making sure everything attached to the wall was well anchored. At first everything seemed normal, and Xavier was a quiet boy who rarely fussed, and often just observed. Then the time came for his registration. This is where she noticed things started to get complicated.

  Everyone got their soul registered at their main church not long after their birth. This ensured that they would be remembered in the family tree in the world system as well as give the parents access to their child's health and status once their interface came online. But Xavier’s never reported back to her or her husband. It had been a very tense moment when they touched his body to the registration orb, and nothing had happened. They consulted the church, and they were able to see his soul was registered and that he had received the gift from gods, but nothing was showing up in her interface window and it was making her concerned.

  Their family had all consoled them since this had never happened to them before, but it wasn’t a rare event in their community. Usually the child died shortly after, or the father would find out that the child wasn’t his since the child wouldn’t show up in their family tree. But that couldn’t be the reason here since she was his MOTHER! The registration should have shown up immediately, allowing her to set his name and to monitor his status. It was something that every mother used to help raise their child, yet she didn’t have that option, and it worried her.

  As if that hadn’t been concerning enough, around the 7th month mark Xavier had started to crawl, and her quiet, normally napping boy was suddenly zooming around the house with reckless abandon. She was constantly having to watch her step because he would zoom around the living room and kitchen tables over and over again. She had even started to notice some wear and tear on the floor where he would travel the most.

  Some days she would come into the living area to find him doing what looked like a workout. There was a space they left open for him to play in, but he seemed more interested in tiring himself out than playing. He would crawl part of the way before turning around and going back. Then he would start over again going a little farther. He would do it again and again until he reached the wall and then would work his way back. A few times she had to stop him because it looked like he might pass out; Xavier would push himself until he was red in the face. Even stranger yet was that he never fussed over his food, it was like he could not eat it fast enough! Her friends and family always complained about trying to feed their children, but here she was adding seconds to his little bowl, watching him tear into it like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  When she was starting to get used to his strange crawling behaviors, it got worse! She walked into the kitchen one day to find him barely hanging on to the cupboard doors. She found little Xavier holding on and swinging his little legs back and forth like he was attempting to swing from the counter onto the table. She of course had panicked and scolded him for his behavior, but it didn’t stop him, it only made him do it when she wasn’t around.

  A good chunk of her day involved her investigation of strange sounds or the lack of sound coming from her boy. Nowhere in the house was off limits to him. She tried a baby gate to keep him in the living room with the hope that she could get at least a few weeks of use out of it before he figured out how to scale it. But she was wrong, she walked into her workshop, letting him out of her sight for only a few minutes before she heard a banging in the kitchen. Sure enough, Xavier had not only gotten past the gate, but he was now on the kitchen counter trying to climb the dish rack in an attempt to get on top of the cupboards.

  She couldn’t figure out why he wanted to be up high so badly. Out of desperation she once picked him up and put him on top of the cupboards just to show him that there was nothing up there. Instead of it making him happier he threw a fit, she did not understand this child. She had tried to put him in a chair with wheels, but that was almost worse! He started doing laps around the living room, causing his chair to slam into the kitchen table, her ankles, and the walls.

  His antics kept her on perpetual high alert, but to make matters worse Xavier had a clever side to him that she was constantly underestimating. One day while cleaning she got desperate and used one of her scripts to clean up the counter after Xavier had knocked over a bag of flour and the little particles had gotten into the fine cracks in the counter. She wasn’t sure how long he had been watching her, but when she was done her ears picked up the lack of sound that Xavier would normally make. She panicked until she turned around to see that Xavier had been watching her work and was attempting to copy her use of script by mimicking her motions. It wouldn’t work since he was missing the interface to interact with scripts, but she was amazed that he even understood what was happening.

  She was grateful the interface locked you out of using scripts until you were a teenager. Some thought the gods did it to be merciful to the parents, others thought it was because a child could potentially hurt themselves. Regardless of the reason, she was happy her child was not able to use scripts yet. She could barely imagine the level of chaos her little boy would bring to the world if he was able to use scripts at his age. The idea made her shudder a little.

  A few more months, she told herself. There were only a few months until Xavier turned one, and he would go to daycare. She had been itching to get back to work, which had recently uncovered a new dig site. A tunnel had been found that had been built by the ancients. It is said that the ancients were so beloved by the gods that the gods granted them the interface to show that they were favored. It is also said that the ancients angered the gods, and the interface was taken away for a while. Nobody really knew for sure since the interface is still around, though it seemed limited when compared to some of the ancient descriptions of it that had been found in previous ruins over the last few centuries.

  The last remaining structures of the ancients that were above ground had been taken over by the church, who also happened to be her works' biggest sponsor. Part of her work is to figure out the story of the ancients and the gods. When she had started maternity leave, the tunnel had just been found, and they hadn’t properly excavated the surrounding area. She had recently heard that one of the rooms in the tunnel had ancient texts that had given them leads to another site about a day away from their town. Teams were being mobilized to explore the area, and she missed this part of her life. Though starting a family had always been a dream of hers, she wasn’t fully ready to give up her life and stay at home. She was excited to get started on her work again, uncovering secrets and maybe enlightening their people just a little bit more. It was work she found fulfilling and exciting.

  But that was later, today she had to watch her boy, who was still trying to copy her movements from before. She had a lot of work ahead of her.

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