Vaccine

Part 2

Tony finished his fishing for the day and walked back to his cabin, as the first person to ever have been injected with the vaccine he was rich but was also glad that he did not have any publicity out here in the wilderness away from everyone else.  It had been around five years since his injection and he had totally enjoyed every day so far of being 27 again, as he closed the door of his cabin he felt himself getting dizzy and unsteady on his feet, he put one hand on the side to steady himself but found that he had no strength in his hand or arm to support his weight and he fell to his knees and then his stomach, he tried to call out but found that he could only make gibberish sounds.  Tony came to the conclusion that he must have had a stroke or something and tried to lift himself to get to his satellite phone but he did not have the strength to even crawl but managed to roll over onto his back, then he felt a warmth spreading around his groin and after a few seconds of wondering what it was, he realised that he had wet himself as it started to get cold and clammy.  Tony lay for days on the floor of his cabin not getting any better and nobody came to check on him.

Around a month after Tony had suffered what he thought was a stroke a woodsman from the next cabin popped over to borrow a tool, but when he entered the cabin he saw the body of Tony on the floor.  The coroner investigated and from the obvious stains of urine and mess in Tony's underwear as well as the fact that he obviously just lay down for days until he starved to death lead the coroner to determine a massive stroke.  As nobody knew of Tony's involvement in the lab test and strokes were uncommon but did still happen Tony's death was not reported to anyone and he case was closed, while his personals were sent to his next of kin.

Jeff Emerson was sitting in front of his huge television opening his post when he came across a strange parcel, it was the personal details of Tony his first test patient, it soon became apparent that Tony had died of a stroke and with no other family had listed Jeff as his next of kin.  Jeff thought nothing of it at first but after a while it niggled at him so much that he started to set things in motion, he told his wife Jane that he needed to open the lab for a few months and she just asked him not to work too hard as they were supposed to be retired.  Jeff then re-employed some of his former technical staff and as many nurses as he could at short notice before sending letters to the 100 test patients asking them to come in for standard follow up tests that would last for a few months but they would be paid a large sum for participating.  All 100 test patients accepted the offer and came to the lap to take up residence in their assigned rooms.

Jeff had calculated that whatever happened to Tony had happened around five years after his vaccine injection, and it was three days until the five year anniversary for the 100 test subjects.  All of the 100 people were cared for by the nurses who brought them all of their meals and anything else they needed, the nurses were all a bit bewildered as they were all recruited on the understanding that they may be required to look after someone debilitated like after a stroke and all of the nurses had experience looking after elderly in care homes prior to the vaccine when all of their patients became young and well again.  Six days after the patients arrived and three days after the five year anniversary of their injection one male patient suddenly lost the ability to function and within a few minutes it was apparent that they could do nothing more than make small weak movements in their bed, soon after another male patient succumbed to the same symptoms, one by one all of the male patients succumbed while the female patients seemed fine.  Jeff visited the male patents and saw one being diapered by the nurse, when he asked why he was told that they had the verbal and motor functions of a young infant which included total incontinence, and the inability to chew or eat anything other than a fluid, so all of the male patients were now in 24/7 diapers and being fed a mixture of nutrients through a large version of an infant's formula bottle.

After a week it was identified that the male patients were becoming younger, approximately 1 year every two days, and after 6 weeks the youngest patient was not more than six months old and he stopped regressing but he also did not start to age again, he had regressed to an infant status and then froze in age.  One by one all of the male patients regressed to a six month infant, all of them squealing and crying, and being bottle fed and having their diapers changed by the nurses who greeted them as adult males just a few weeks earlier.

Jeff was petrified as he thought that this could be the end result for all males on the planet, mindless infants squealing for their next diaper change or bottle of formula.  But a few weeks later Jeff stumbled across a breakthrough, he was observing one of the infants when he thought he saw a degree of understanding behind the squeals, babbles, and drool.  Jeff immediately set to work on further developing an invention that had been marketed for coma patients years before that enabled peoples thoughts to be taken through a computer into a live output, Jeff employed more computer and electrical specialists and after a few months had several working prototypes that he tried on the former men.  It worked perfectly as Jeff found out that all of them retained their adult memories and comprehension they just lacked the ability to communicate or do anything physical, Jeff continued to work with his small team to create a mobile contraption that attached to a regressed mans head and allowed his thoughts to be passed through a computer so that he could speak to those around him via a computerised voice, he then worked so that mobile carrier chairs made for an infant could be moved around via the regressed men's thoughts giving them mobility again.  The women patients still had no symptoms and were allowed to return home, the following day Jeff made his announcement to the worlds governments and it was soon leaked to the media.

Within days Jeff was forced to allow the male patients at his facility to return home to their wives and loved ones in their regressed infant state, soon images of six month old infants controlling mobile chairs and speaking with computer voices were all over the media as the world went into melt down.  Male dominated governments soon understood the risk to themselves and quickly began introducing laws protecting the rights of regressed citizens, soon after these laws started to go through the long winded approval process the first men in the general population started to regress.  As the first people to take the vaccine were wealthy and self-centred they were all rich men and many of them were politicians, in fact of the male population of US politicians 98% had been in the first month's vaccine group with the remainder in the second month, seeing a potential break for women's rights female politicians deliberately slowed the already slow political process so that by the time the first law to protect regressed men's rights was to be voted on almost all of the male politicians were six month old infants and the rest were well on their way.

The vote to pass the regressed men's rights bill was in congress and the few adult women were surrounded by infants, many of whom had nurses close by in case they needed their diaper changed or an interim feed (as infants stomachs need little and often feeding), the smell of wet and dirty diapers spread around the room as the debate started and some of the congressmen were changed by their nurse.  After around 30 minutes one congresswoman took the stand and began reading one of the rules of congress which stipulated that no minor under the age of 21 was to be present during any congressional hearing, when the computerised voices of the male infants all started to complain and say that the new bill would change that rule as well as giving them the right to vote and be a political representative, the female congresswomen simply said that the bill had not yet been passed and as such she must insist that all children under the age of 21 years must be removed from the room and she made it perfectly clear by saying that included all infants and their nurses.  The congresswoman stared at the assembled nurses who quickly started to collect their little charges against their complaints and take them out of the room, later that same day for president and vice president as well as the majority of the senators were removed from office stating their age prevented them from public service.  A new election was prepared with clear guidance that only those physically over the age of 21 were able to vote as well as stand for office, as most people knew that all men would within a few years be unable to hold any office beyond diaper tester, so any man who stood for office received minimal support and women took over all main political offices.

While men were effectively removed from political office they could still perform some roles even in their infant status if they had a job that simply required their mind and understanding of something in order to achieve an outcome, or if they could do something where they used a phone or spoke to people in a shop, however the vast majority of men did not have a job like this and without their income their wives or family could not afford the expensive automated chairs and computer mind links, so they simply became infants.

Almost five years after the first regression of a man, almost the entire world's population of men had regressed to that of an infant, it had been found that a tiny fraction of men seemed not to be effected and retained their physical adult status, but that was around 1 in 10 million, so adult males quickly became almost unheard of.  At the same time new political powers were rising up all over the world, in most middle and far east nations where women were formerly oppressed by men, the new female governments made the computer mind computers that allowed former men to communicate illegal and the new immortal infants were taken care of in crèches and treated as if they were a normal 6 month old infant.  Images of screaming infants forced to forego any adult communication or interaction and instead be treated as a true infant bombarded social media.

Jeff was watching an image of the former Chinese president screaming while his diaper was changed and then he was put back into his crib, a shudder ran down Jeff's spine.  He was one of the last remaining adult men and in a few weeks it would be the date when he would either start to regress of be one of the very few lucky ones.  Jeff had made sure that he had all of the latest technological equipment available for when he regressed, he would have the best mind link system as well as a mobile carrier that he could drive around and even a car that would self-drive on his command, so he would be as independent as possible.  Just then an advert came on the television, it was one that Jeff had seen a few times but was getting more and more air time as it became more popular with customers globally, it showed a crying male infant refusing to have a bottle of formula, then the motherly looking figure held up some Go-Nurse pills and then it showed her breast feeding the infant who was suckling happily.  This new drug had hit the market a few years ago but had only ramped up in its popularity as men were almost completely phased out so had no voice to oppose it.  Sales of mind link computers had crashed and the company that made the motor carriers for wealthy infants had gone into administration as adult women became more and more insistent on how their former men were taken care of, many of these men who used to be wealthy or powerful were having their mind link computers taken off them and the number of former men who were able to participate in adult communication was getting less and less by the day.  This turn of events scared Jeff the most, especially when he then saw an advert for the new political party WF-BAB which stood for women first – babies are babies and their main pledge was to ensure that regressed men are treated as the infants they clearly now were and to stop pandering to their former male ego by allowing them to think that they have any impact on the world today, they also wanted to start giving the vaccine to young boys who had been born after the initial vaccine run out so that they would never grow to resent their female leaders.