Nearly at the end of my story now, but I am adding two chapters today. Sadly, there is no more written after this set, so it might be a good few days until the next/last chapter, so I hope you enjoy.
Chapter 8 Talk training
He would spend a few days at home equilibrating, then after that he would begin to attend the creche a couple of times a week and begin to make some new friends and start his Baby craft lessons. The courses he had been registered for were; the baby talk improvement class, the baby play class and finally, the baby time schedule that was designed to introduce naps and sleep time schedules that would have to be relearnt.
The trouble with being a grown up is that they do not have a huge amount to learn and so the brain does not have to work so hard and so therefore does not tire. In an infant, there is continual barrage of learning, from speech learning, understanding, and using their senses and recognition learning. There is also a huge physical development and a huge expenditure in energy flapping about moving limbs, toddling or crawling depending on the age of the infant.
The creche developed a room where the senses were swamped with all manner of things that an adult would be hard pressed to cope with. Bonnets had hidden earphones built in to them and this would play music and speech continually. Foreign languages were found to be very helpful especially if the stories were interesting and they wanted to understand what was being said. The floors were moving like a ship in a swell so that they continually had to adjust to keep their balance. The lighting went from bright to dim with colours altering the whole time. It was a mental challenge for any adult and an hour was found to be quite exhausting, especially when they had to produce coloured pictures while all this was happening.
A session in this room and big baby was completely tired and ready for a nap.
However, there was an alternative that was being investigated at the creche and that was a special derivative of a plant called mescal button a type of cactus with the potent active mescalin. It had an acute affect on the mind that caused varying degrees of illusions, hallucinations, altered perception of space and time, and altered body image. Users may also experience euphoria, which is sometimes followed by feelings of anxiety. The effect on body often came with intense nausea, vomiting, dilation of the pupils, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, a rise in body temperature that causes heavy perspiration, headaches, muscle weakness, and impaired motor coordination. All perfect for your new baby.
Fentanyl, an opiate that has ravaged America's youth, and xylazine are combined to create Tranq. This causes intense almost instantaneous drowsiness that can also lead to amnesia. This mix plus mescaline is the new coc-ktail developed by the creche, which is prepared in a gel that could be used to dip the baby’s dummy in and to make life simple for baby to ask for it, they called it mumu.
Tommy was delivered to the creche for his first session in the Baby Talk class and he was introduced to Bobby, Charlotte (who was originally Charlie), Davina (who was originally David), Simon (who will become Simone in due course) and Baba (who’s name had been deliberately erased from the records). They were all new additions to the creche and had over the last few weeks been through the nappy training that he had.
The six of them sat on little plastic chairs wearing onesies of various colours. Big nappies bulging out from their nether regions, all securely bibbed and dummied in readiness for their lessons. All of them were nervous and had been told not to talk as they had to listen to what they were going to be told.
Nurse Mary was the speech therapist in charge and she walked along the line of plastic chairs patting them on their heads and welcoming them to their new class. After a few minutes Nurse Elizabeth came in with a stroller and sat Bobby in it, then wheeled him away.
“He’ll be back in a minute” explained Nurse Mary, “he has gone for his morning treat and will be back in a moment.” Sure enough a few moments later she returned with Bobby who had clearly been crying. This unsettled the remaining babies. One by one they were taken away and returned, all showed signs of tears. The last to go was Tommy.
The nurse walked him out one door and straight into the door next to it. A man in a white coat said “take out your dummy and stick out your tongue for a sweetie.” The minute Tom did so it was grabbed by a tube with quite a strong vacuum that held it firm as a series of needles stabbed it all along the top and particularly at the tip. Within seconds it began to feel numb and tears began to well up in his eyes as he slowly lost much of the feeling in his tongue. He went to talk but the doctor wagged a big finger in his face and said “No!” as he put a chocolate bean on the top of his tongue and told him to close his mouth. The dummy was replaced but it now felt alien in his mouth. More tears formed as he was wheeled back.
The group was very subdued. Nurse Mary said they were going to learn a few words and was going to show them some pictures. The first was a feeding bottle. “This is a ba ba” she said “can you say that?”
The group went to remove their dummies, but nurse Mary said “No sweethearts you can keep your dummies in because these new words are so you can talk without taking them out and still your Mummy will understand you.”
“Ba ba” they all said in unison
Next she showed a white square cloth hanging on the line, a nappy. “Naffy” she said “you say it, naffy.” They all complied. Rubber pants were wubber panth, thank you was fank oo, potty was pothy (not that they would ever be needing one), and grandma was gwanny or nanna depending on what she liked.
They worked away on a list of almost thirty words and it took almost an hour. “Okay babies, you can take a rest now and take out your dummies and talk to each other for a few minutes.” She left the room and within seconds there was a great cry that came from within as the six realised that their tongues were no longer capable of forming proper shapes to form their words.
“My nameth Thimon lisped one, dribbling and spluttering past his misshapen tongue. “I’m ethpethially sowwy to be here” moaned another. “Me need a cwean naffy” said another breaking down into tears. “My dum dum ith mithing” wailed another searching for his pacifier.
Nurse Mary returned with six nursery nurses who took each of their charges to go for clean nappies and then to go for their morning naps. The team had decided that now was a good time to try out the newly introduced mumu and to study the effects.
Tom was the first.