Just some information before you start reading:

I will use through my story the centimeters and meter scale because it is the one that I am most familiar with, but I will post in Parentheses the conversion to feet of all the measurements that appears in the story.

Chapter 1

Everything that happened in that dreadful event is still in my mind. I was returning from a visit to the Planet Marlonia with other 3 crew members when a space anomaly happened. My shuttlecraft was caught in a molecular reversion field that started to alter the composition of the shuttlecraft haul. We were lucky that we were already in transport range from the Enterprise, but while the emergency transport was successful in bringing us to safety, something had happened to us that changed the lives of the four of us from that time forward.

We were transformed into kids; our actual age was calculated by the doctor to be no more than eight years old. Doctor Crusher diagnosis was that in our Rybo-viroxic-nucleic structure there were some of the key viroxic sequences missing (the sequences that we gain during our growth), and as a result we were turned in kids. She was not able to reverse our condition, but she said that we would grow to become adults again. That was really a shock; in a second I ceased to be the famous captain Picard to become no more than a small and thin 1,15 meter (3'8'') boy. After a week of studies onboard the starship the result remained the same: that our condition was irreversible in any other means other than natural growth.

What was curious was that I could still think as my former self, I didn't have a child's mind, nonetheless my body was still the same as an eight years old kid, and as counselor Troy expressed herself, it would be very difficult for the crew (not my senior officers, since they were with me for six years now and respected me for what I was) to respect and be commanded by a small boy.

After I was relived from duty, I spent 3 weeks on earth in a hospital for further analysis of my condition, and the diagnostic that doctor Crusher had given me was confirmed. I was happy at first, who wouldn't like to have a second chance in life? In a certain point of view I was the luckiest person on earth (well, me and the other 3 crewmembers).

But difficulties started to emerge once I tried to go back to a relatively normal life again, and some of the situation that I found myself into made me realize how difficult would be to be back again in society or in command. Everything that I have trained for in the academy and as an officer had not prepared me enough to what was coming…

The first day outside the hospital was already troublesome; it all began at the morning, when I decide to take a cab to my old apartment. Since there were a lot of them near the entrance, I just entered in the first one, and said to the cab driver:

-12 street number 367 please.

He lowered the window between the first and the second row of seats, looked at me and said: little boy, where is your mom and dad?

(I need to explain something beforehand in case you are not familiar with the ID system of earth, every citizen has one small card that when pressed a button, shows over it an holographic projection of its holder face, with his rank (if you are from the Starfleet), age (biological age, so my age would be 8 instead of 45), social number, civil status, filiations, criminal status, and really, a lot of other things.)

Oh god, it had already started, I thought to myself. I took my newly made ID given to me by a Starfleet officer the day before, pressed the button, what showed was a digital representation of myself (a small boy with short brown hair) alongside with the information: Jean Luc Picard, Single, Starfleet Officer, Rank: Captain, Age 8, Social number 897865*****, status: Relived from Duty.

If the system were in any way Hackable, the cab driver would have thought that I was joking with him, but that was not the case, the system had been unhackable for a century now, and all the information shown in there were considered undeniable truth (for my luck). He looked at me, looked at my ID, by his expression I could deduce that he was having a hard time believing, and I sympathized with the man, since that would me my exact reaction if the places were reversed.

He took about ten minutes to recover, from what I can recall, and murmured something like (Starfleet must be joking) closed the window, and started the Skycar.

Just after I got down form that cab I noticed the first problem of my condition. I was a lot of centimeters smaller than the rest of the crowd, and I could not see a thing in front of me, only other people. The path from the street to the entrance of my apartment seemed a lot longer than the usual, and having to navigate between people legs only made the process more difficult. Eventually I arrived at my old apartment complex, went directly to the elevator, and was faced with another problem: I lived in the highest floor, and the button that usually was at the height of my eyes was now so high that I could not reach it. Lucky for me a young woman had just entered the elevator with me and, for what could be described as a very embarrassing moment, I had to ask her to push de button. She just looked at me with a smile and said "no problem".

The rest of the day I spent imagining what would I do with my life from now on. All I could think of was to find something useful to occupy me before I became depressed with boredom. I even considered, in my despair, entering in an elementary school.