Tale #162: A High Capacity

Tale #162: A High Capacity (Content Tags: Messy diapers, sci-fi, humiliation, slice of life, brain drain) The diaper made the same 'high-capacity' boast that his brain did, with the cruel difference being that his diaper would inevitably fill to meet that capacity before his brain could do the same. In an irony befitting a Greek tragedy, or perhaps a 'Laurel and Hardy' routine, seeking to improve one had required the necessity of the other. And now he was in another fine mess. More often than not, quite literally. There had been such emphasis on the conclusion, that the supposed brainiac hadn't done due diligence to assure that the journey there would be safe, or that it would end the way he envisioned. All his focus had been on solving one specific dilemma, without a single thought about the consequences that would come about, without the worry that a larger dilemma might fill the shoes being left behind, or in his case, the diapers. Dexter the poindexter, or Dex, or now 'Dexter the dummy', or 'Diaper Dex', or with less cute alliteration: 'the retard that just crapped in his Huggies'. Regardless of given name or title, some of which were now quite painful to hear, he had once been considered brilliant. A brilliance so radiant, that he'd been one of the youngest members to be in consideration of the 'Think Tank' ever. The Think Tank. What a joke that seemed like now. Dex couldn't even be trusted to operate the tank of the toilet, let alone to be a member of the finest consortium of intellects on the planet. The only 'tank' he was familiarized with now was that of 'Thomas and Friends'. Barely double-digits in age, and now certainly double-digits in IQ, Dexter had treasured deeply the letter of consideration. There existed no group that had the same prestige, or the same access to resources and infrastructure. Science was their lifeblood, mathematics their bones, engineering their flesh, and programming their brain. A membership was worth more than one could imagine. But it had only been a consideration, not a promise, and such an honor was not something to be given twice. That'd actually been a problem for the boy, and an unfair stroke of luck; it was the equivalent of winning the lottery, but not being old enough to redeem the ticket, and much like that analogy, his age had been a part of the issue. It would have been a different story altogether if the invitation to apply had come to him as an adult, or even as a teenager, but it'd come to him as a child. It was the opportunity for a Michelin star, except the critic was reaching for the pastry that'd yet to cook all the way through, instead of patiently awaiting perfection. Dexter had been a genius, that much was obvious. He'd published papers in noteworthy journals by the time he was six, and while he'd been left in school for social development, he'd technically graduated an ivy league school with multiple PhDs by the time he was seven. He tinkered with inventions, he brewed inconceivable concoctions, and he'd written fantastic formulas. But he was still just in his larval stage. The human brain, unlike most brains in the animal kingdom, spent a long time fully developing. It took years for that jellied mass upstairs to mature, and for all the structures within to reach their ultimate potential. It didn't require a degree in biology to figure that out, it was common sense that an adult was just plain smarter than a child. Perhaps that would have been a more successful approach, if he'd found a way to age his brain, or even his whole body. He could have been bathed in ethylene, like a fruit being rapidly ripened, but his vanity hadn't even considered the possibility; it was a historic honor to possibly become the youngest member after all. So no, he hadn't gone the more sensible route. Instead, he'd put all his eggs in the basket of changing the physical structuring of his own brain. He'd chosen a path that had now led him to drooling down his own chin, and defecating down his pantleg. He'd chosen what would instead make him a candidate for a syndicate of simpletons, where the consideration letter came in the form of one of those dirtied diapers that he loved to sniff so much now. So in a matter of approach, it could be confirmed that Dexter had made the wrong one. What exactly had that approach been? It'd been a focus on expanding his own intellectual capacity. In simplistic terms, it had been like a homeowner plotting to greatly expand the size of their house, without considering the fact that they would have nothing to fill all that space with. Just a large, sparse, labryinthian structure where the inhabitants would struggle to move from one end to the other, or would get lost. There could have been a way to do it that would have been successful, if his plan had incorporated patience; a little growth every week, while working to learn as much as he could, so that the synaptic connections could keep up. But his interview, and his demonstration of his intellect, were not things that would wait. The Think Tank could call upon him at any time to move the process further along, and he couldn't risk being unprepared for it. There simply wasn't enough confidence in his own worth; he had to take risks, even if those risks were as high stakes as this. What a fool he had been! How arrogant of him! Unbridled ambition, unchcked hubris, and a sense of caution that had not yet been tempered by a lifetime of experiencing disappointment. He was a living, breathing, pantsfilling cautionary tale. He had gone to such lengths to prove victorious, to come out on top, and yet, none of that mattered now. The details of the self-inflicted procedure were lost to him now, since he no longer had the intellectual processing ability to read through his own notes, nor the patience to recollect the memories that'd led up to his fate. It wouldn't have mattered if he had remembered perfectly anyway, because the remodel was irreversible; resculpting his own brain was something that had been quite permanent. What he did know was that the process had been carried out by a mutagenic retrovirus of his own creation. It wasn't something contagious, thankfully, as his own genetic code had been used as a basis for the genesis of the virus; it could only affect him specifically, and it was basically a non-mechanical form of a nanomachine, as it'd been programmed with precise instructions on how to alter him. So the transformation hadn't been immediate, but had instead been over the course of a few days. Those had been the last days of his brilliance, and the last days of his ability to wear normal underwear. By the time he had recognized that his thoughts were slowing to a crawl, it had become far too late to find a solution, or to stop the process. It was three days in whenever he'd first wet himself, and four days in whenever he'd first soiled himself. A week in, and the virus had completely finished the job and had been excised from his body, and deposited into the back of the padded garment he had no choice but to clad himself in. One week to go from an unbelievable genius to an unfathomable retard. He could remember the fear that he had felt, whenever things had started to go awry; sentences became stunted, as the words took too long to travel through his mind, and calculations became impossible. If his IQ was represented as a little scientist, then that scientist had gone from efficiently working in a cramped broom closet, to having their workspace become the size of an aircraft carrier, with the amount of tools remaining the same and being scattered all about. Just imagine it, that poor little scientist having to trudge hundreds of yards between his workstations; up and down staircases, between many empty floors. Everything being in unfamiliar places, so the scientist didn't even know where to find his bunsen burner. Everything got slowed down tremendously, and everything was misplaced, so that is what became of his thoughts. Plenty of basics remained intact, such as walking and engaging in simple activities; the most essential things, the things that were most commonly used, remained functional. Those types of skills were handled by a different part of the brain, which hadn't seen the same kind of impact; one could call it a separate little man inside his head, perhaps the pilot that ferried the aircraft carrier around, put in a neat little box where everything was still easily accessible. Toileting had unfortunately not been in that little box. On a primitive level, the signals may have reached that box, but the capacity to do anything with those signals was all in the prefrontal cortex, which was down with the little scientist in his head. Pottytraining, as much as it doesn't seem so, would be something considered a task of higher cognition; it wasn't as nearly as innate or automatic as people would like to believe. That's a solid part of why a poor intelligence could easily predict poor toileting, because it took a shockingly robust apparatus in the higher functioning part of the brain to control. Incontinence wasn't exactly the same in that regard, as it usually was an affliction born of other hitches in the pipeline, but it did explain why complex control took a baseline level of intellect. Losing control of his bladder for the first time and urinating on himself, that had thankfully happened in the privacy of his own bedroom. He'd been combing his hair in the mirror, and a sudden wet warmth had started to spread around his crotch. What horror it had been to look down and see that damp stain grow across the front of his jeans, trickling down his pantlegs and soaking his socks. He'd stupidly convinced himself that it was a growing pain of the process, and that it wouldn't be a permanent problem. But then he crapped himself the next day, and while in the middle of the class that he didn't need to take. The class of children his own age, which he only was enrolled in for his own social growth, and where he felt a smug superiority to everyone there, including the teacher. Dexter was supposed to be the brilliant genius of the class. He was supposed to be far above any of them, like how the moon was far above the earth! But he'd proven how far he'd crashed down from the heavens... It had been math class. A math class that was so far beneath his level that he typically paid no attention to what was being taught. That day had been about dividing large numbers; something simple enough for a basic calculator to accomplish in a couple of strokes. The question on the board had stumped his classmates, and in his arrogance, Dexter had took it upon himself to show them all up. Once he was up there though, dry-erase marker in hand, there was a realization that the answer didn't automatically float to the front of his brain. The calculation should have been instantaneous to him, without even requiring the process of working through it, but it was nowhere to be found. Dexter just stared at it, while everyone waited. And then, before he could register what was happening, he pooped his pants. His favorite briefs, with the little stars and rockets on them, were unfortunately what would take the brunt of this indiscretion. The little puff of gas was discreet, subtle, but what came afterwards was anything but. A large mushy mass, a pliable pile, had plopped right into the back of his briefs; he hadn't even been the first to notice it happen, his unremarkable classmates had that honor. What else would they have been fixated on? The class genius had just made a fat lump in the back of his shorts, while looking dazed at the equation on the board; this was a spectacle! It was only after they started laughing that he noticed for himself, and then he'd waddled out of the room in a hurry, with tears of shame blurring his vision. That shame felt like it was from a different lifetime now. So much worse had happened since then, and his mental state had devolved to unrecognizable levels in that time. It hadn't been long after that accident that he had to start wearing pull-ups, and it wasn't long after that, when he'd ultimately been demoted all the way back to diapers. No, not just diapers. That was too broad a spectrum to sort through. What he now wore around his waist, which raised high to prevent the many blowouts he'd had beforehand, were diapers that could only be intended for the mentally retarded. They had the thickness, the durability, the sheer capacity, that was required for someone whose intellectual level was that of the worst kind of pantspooper. And he was the worst kind of pantspooper. That much couldn't be questioned, not any longer. Heck, at some point throughout his fall from grace, he'd even cracked enough to start enjoying that fact. Complex thought, which had once been his drug of choice, was no longer possible for him, so the allure of a dirty diaper had come to replace it. There was a sensory aspect to it, and that didn't require any real thought at all. It was all about how it felt. To his skin, and to his nose. It gave him a warmth, and a satisfied sense of accomplishment. Maybe he had picked that up from his new peers; the very peers that were now considered his equals, and who toddled around the same special classroom that he did. As could probably be expected, his audition with the Think Tank hadn't gone as well as he had hoped. It was a desperate move to even still go, whenever his brain had become so scattered; it'd been pure ego to still attend, whenever he'd come shuffling in with a pair of oversized Huggies strapped to his rump. Incontinence of the medical variety could have been excused, sure, but not when paired with what looked to be idiocy. He had tried to explain his case, of course, but it'd been a futile effort. His words being so sluggish and disjointed, the drool teasing at the corner of his mouth, and the involuntary defecation in the middle of his sentence, it'd been simply too much. Self-afflicted mental retardation through scientific experimentation was no redeeming excuse. Bending his knees and grunting out a trio of growlers in his crinkly 'waste receptacle', while flatulence was an orchestra, and his words were minced beyond recognition, was not how a member of such a prestigious organization was supposed to act. Dexter had failed, and that failure was permanent. The Think Tank didn't allow do-overs, and once being branded inadequate, a prospective member was forever barred from entry. Even if he could fix himself, he would still never become a member now. That crushing realization had made it easier for him to give up altogether, and to accept the new boy that he had become. Demoted back to diapers, sent to the SPED room, and viewed as nothing more than a drooling pantspooper; he accepted it all. He knew that there was a way to fix himself, if he was to just spend enough time filling the spaces in his head with more information, but his resolve had crumbled. It was easier to just stack alphabet blocks and to crap in his pants. The more he accepted this new existence, the harder it would become to go back to the way things were. He was filling that empty space with dumb-dumb things, and so that was all he would be capable of being. That high capacity brain of his would become filled with the same quality of intellect that his high capacity diaper was being filled with. It was a fitting end.