✅ Younger Than You Think?

"K: Country Road"

"So what do we do with her?"

They weren't the words Iriña had expected to hear. In her mind, anyone who would go to such lengths to snatch her must have a very clear plan for what to do with her. They would have some plan in mind, wouldn't they? She looked up at the back of the new woman's head, and tried to figure out what was going on there.

"I don't know," Seamus answered, showing a short temper that had never been evident in the way he talked before. "Lyle looked up all these scientific papers about her. Apparently, Irene was the first person ever to survive more that six months with a particular syndrome, and the drugs they used had a weird and confusing set of interactions."

"Iriña," Lyle corrected. "You can at least pronounce it right. It's Kolechian, I think, maybe she had an ancestor from there."

"Right. But one of them is delaying her growth, we knew that much to start with. Everybody who shops in Titansville has that, for one reason or another. And she looks like a little kid, perfect for adoption."

"The problem is training time," Lyle explained. "She's going to rebel against us, she doesn't want to be treated like a baby. How long will it be before she's emotionally ready to repeat potty training? Or to forget advanced language?"

"We're better than we used to be," the new woman answered again. "That's the difference between working in acquisitions and the schoolroom. How many new developments did you have in the last ten years? You found out about Titansville, and before that you infiltrated the internet support forums for dwarfism. But the drugs haven't developed beyond having a more predictable duration. Ours, on the other hand... the average time to compliance with directions has dropped from four years to just eighteen months. Even if her new family wants to do basic language education and potty training, we can have her capabilities at their desired starting point in two years, maybe less. Assuming her current age is somewhere in the early twenties – your initial report said she was first seen in Titansville last year, right? – but even if she's something like sixteen, that indicates that biological ageing has almost stopped. Two years in the schoolroom means we can likely offer at least ten as Daddy's perfect little toddler. And probably another ten looking childlike enough for our clients to be satisfied."

"Nuh-uh," Lyle answered again. "She's not sixteen. She's shopping in Titansville because she has the intellectual and emotional development of an adult. But her actual age will be six next week. Six. And the stunted growth was due to drugs she was taking before her first birthday, buying time while they worked on something better. Looking at those papers, ageing is actually something that prompted conflicting theories from the academic community. She might grow normally, permanently two or three years behind her chronological age. Or she might catch up in a year or two. So by the time your training finishes, she will look like she should be in school."

"That doesn't fit the Forever Child brand," Seamus added,in case the weird woman didn't get it. Meanwhile, Iriña tried to wrap her head around everything she was hearing. He'd said 'Forever Child' as if it meant something; and that seemed to be the last piece in the puzzle. These people weren't after children; they were after adults who looked like children. So they monitored Titansville, probably watching everyone who went in and out. But why? It sounded like there were people out there who really wanted to raise a young child, and were disappointed when the kids grew up.

Iriña thought about her friend Alain, who she often chatted with online and had met a few times on her shopping trips. Anyone looking at the two of them together might have assumed they were kids the same age, maybe three years old. But Alain was nearly thirty now, and had been the same size right through his school career. If they had managed to snatch him when he was eighteen, these people could have persuaded him to play the role of someone's small child for ten years already; and it would probably be at least another decade before he was obviously not a child.