The Reporter Regression

📖 The Scoop

Tim Lansing is a reporter running for his life. After exposing the powerful Mansford mafia family and nearly (but not quite) sending its leader, Julius Mansford to prison, Mr. Lansing must run from town to town barely a step ahead of his hunters. Tim’s latest move lands him in the small college town of Centerville, home to a drug rehabilitation center called Forever Free. The last thing Tim wants is to draw attention to himself, but the investigative reporter in him cannot resist looking into stories of missing persons last seen admitted to Forever Free. He expects to find the center does not offer a 100% cure as advertised, but rather the missing clients have returned to their drug use and either died or moved away. The rehab Director Donald Miles, however, has other plans for the meddling reporter and decides to make a “therapeutic” intervention. Tim wakes up one day in the body of a 15-month-old baby; a toddler with the charming nickname of Timmy Turtle, living at a daycare center—Buttons & Blocks.

Life in diapers, pacifiers, bottles, and cribs is quite a radical change for the 35-year-old reporter, but Tim decides to play along until he can figure out just what the heck happened to him, an event he has no memory of. Through careful observation and well-placed questions, Tim is able to determine the relation between Forever Free and Buttons & Blocks—they are transforming adult drug addicts into infants and toddlers with little or no memory of their previous lives.

Tim is able to play along, that is, until he is introduced to a lovely family that wants to adopt him. He decides it is time to escape. But there is a problem. Assuming Tim can figure out how to return to his adult self, he will immediately be hunted by the mafia again. Does he risk a life on the run that will ultimately end in his murder, or does he choose the life of Timmy Turtle with two great parents and adoring siblings? Forces beyond his control will force Tim to take action, and neither Tim’s life nor the world of Buttons & Blocks will ever be the same again.

Genre: Fiction / Fantasy / General (fancy, right?)