💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

꩜💧✓ 🚼 A Younger Babysitter

Set in a world where there's a thing called "second infancy". It's believed to be some kind of neurological response to the increasing data our brains are bombarded with from a young age. It mostly affects women, and usually between the ages of 18 and 24. Laws have changed, so that people going into second infancy can have their legal rights stripped away. There are babysitters who specialise in looking after these people as well; although that's usually just a respite for their partners, who take primary responsibility for childcare.

This story focuses on one young woman who has seen the women in their second infancy around town, being pushed in strollers, generally pampered, and always with adults taking care of them. And she finds that she kind of envies the amount of attention they get. So, when she has a couple of weeks off from her job as a medical secretary, she decides to give it a try. She's going to pretend to be in infancy, and hire a babysitter to look after her for a couple of days. Now, she needs to get an official diagnosis to hire a babysitter, so there's no question of whether the babysitter is allowed to override her wishes in favour of following the plan they were given by her partner. But she's a medical secretary, and has all the documents. Forging a diagnosis isn't hard. And the babysitters have contact forms to book them, can all be done online, and the partner's identity doesn't need to be verified. So she can create a fantasy boyfriend, fill in the forms as him, and a babysitter will show up and take care of her, no questions asked.

What she doesn't know is that the disease isn't real. It was made up by a bunch of successful businessmen who wanted more authority over their wives. Now a lot of guys know about it, but it's never spoken of in public, and the secret is only shared with people they can trust: There is a babysitting firm that can give your girlfriend Second Infancy Syndrome, using a combination of drugs and psychological manipulation. Most of the men using it think there's only a tiny number of them who know this secret; they aren't aware that the whole syndrome is fake. Only the ones who started it, and the directors of the company, are aware of that particular secret. And some of the politicians who got complete authority over their girlfriends in exchange for signing certain laws, of course.

And the main character of this story is soon to find out. She says there "must have been a mistake" when the babysitter arrives early and finds her still cooking her last adult dinner before a long weekend being treated like a baby. So they chat a little; she's surprised to find that the babysitter is younger than her, but doesn't think it's a problem. Just a fun irony. She's cursing herself because her plan failed, of course. The babysitter knows she's not got the mind of an infant, so she won't get to enjoy some time as a baby after all. She says something like the booking system must have got the address wrong; and expects that her preparations will be wasted.

She didn't realise that "full care" babysitting isn't just the highest luxury service for pampered neo-babies. It's a euphemism for the regression service. And quite a few of their customers say that the computer must have been wrong, because they had no idea that their husbands had hired a babysitter for them.

The babysitter says that she'll get in trouble if she comes back without doing the job. She needs to take pictures to show the baby playing, eating, and sleeping; these go in the corporate confidential records as proof that the required tasks were done and the baby wasn't neglected. She asks if the young woman would be willing to play along and pretend to be a baby. Sounds like luxury... she says that while she's got a break from work, she doesn't mind being pampered. An unexpected problem resolved itself, it seems. Until she starts to wet herself, and the babysitter starts treating her like she really is a baby...

Eventually she gets scared enough to tell the babysitter that there won't be a boyfriend coming home to look after her after the days she booked. She confesses to what she did, and the babysitter realises that this is a real problem. But once she knows the truth, the woman decides that she wouldn't mind getting a real diagnosis. And she's been such a fun client that the babysitter ends up taking her home. Everybody wins.