Richard sulked. Of all the indignities he'd suffered that day--and there had been many--this must have been the worst.
He was sitting in the lap of a woman who must have been half his age and half his weight; her arms were wrapped tight around his waist. He wore a pink dress and white tights, and there were pink bows in his hair. A glance in a mirror a couple of minutes ago had shown him that he was currently in the shape of a very young girl, perhaps three years old, with a baby face and wavy brown hair, but that didn't make him feel any better. Richard thought it was cruel to dress anyone up like this... child or not, girl or not.
Richard wasn't a senator, wasn't a governor, wasn't even a congressman. Even being a mayor, though, brought with it a certain amount of gravitas... or it should have, at least. If any of his constituents were to see him dressed in this ridiculous clothing, his political career would be over. For that reason, at least, Richard was grateful that anyone who looked at him would see a little girl instead of a grown man.
Dealing with the woman whose lap he was sitting in... that was a different story.
The woman was a young mother, likely no more than twenty-five. She seemed to be a doting mother; she had been fussing with Richard's hair when he had jumped in. And she was a worrisome mother... when he'd tried to extricate himself from her lap, she had told him not to squirm, and when he'd struggled free of her arms and tried to run off, she had picked him up--picked him up, effortlessly, as though he really weighed thirty pounds instead of two hundred--and put him back in her lap, chiding him and telling him that it wasn't safe for him to go off playing alone right now. How she had managed to pick him up Richard would never understand, but that seemed to be the way these swaps worked... he interacted with the world as though he really were the person he looked like, and so his "mother" was able to pick him up as though he really were a little girl. Perhaps it had had something to do with that strange yellow glow he'd seen around the woman's hands, and his own for that matter, when the woman had picked him up? He didn't know... that was the kind of thing his analysts would normally have figured out for him.
So now he sat grumpily but quietly on the woman's lap, watching the news with her and waiting impatiently for his next jump. And at last it came, taking him away from this preschool nightmare. The world vanished in a brilliant flash of light, and when it cleared...
...Richard saw, to his surprise, that he was exactly where he'd been before the light. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was still wearing the same awful dress and tights, and that he was still sitting on the woman's lap. He even still had the bows in his hair, he realized as he reached up to touch his head. And in the mirror on the wall, he saw the same disgruntled little girl. What on earth had just happened?
Richard waited for the light to come again. He waited... and waited... and waited, for what felt like half an hour, easily. He put up with the mother's fussiness, with her baby talk, with her condescension; he put up with the tights and the humiliation. He drank from the sippy cup she gave him when he muttered something about needing a drink, and he pretended to play with the dolls she got for him when he began to squirm restlessly in her lap. He put up with every indignity, with the faith that the jump would come eventually and tug him away into a less humiliating life. But gradually, it became clear to Ted that the jump was never going to come... that the aborted jump half an hour before had been his last, that whatever manic energy had fueled his nonstop switching had finally fizzled out. And with that, he leapt from the woman's lap and sprinted for the door.
"Caitlin," the woman said, startled by Richard's sudden, strange behavior, "where are you going?"
"Ma'am," Richard said, cramming his feet into the tiny mary janes that rested next to the front door of the house, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but I'm not your daughter. My name is Richard Dickinson, I'm the mayor of this city, and I have a job to do." Placing a hand on the door, he said, "I thank you for your hospitality, and for the apple juice, but I'm afraid I have to get going. I wish you the best of luck finding your real daughter."
Opening the door, Richard stepped onto the doorstep...
...and stopped.
He willed himself to keep going, but he couldn't. It was like his feet were rooted to the floor. He found he could take a step backwards, into the house, but when he stepped back otuside, he stopped again.
"Caitlin," the woman said, rising from the couch and walking toward him. "Or Richard, I... you're really not my daughter?" Tears brimmed along her eyes. "Where's my Caitlin, then?"
"I wish I could tell you," Richard said, frowning. "I truly do, but..." He tried to lift his leg again... and found, suddenly, that he could. Placing it on the ground in front of him, he took a tentative step forward... then another... then he broke into a run... and stopped again a few feet later. Once more he was frozen in place.
Turning, he said, "Miss, could you come here?"
The woman hesitated, then approached Richard. As she reached him, Richard took a few more steps forward, but when he got a few feet away from the woman, he was forced to stop again.
Sighing, he turned to your woman. "Madam, I'm the mayor," he said solemnly. "I have access to the police force, the fire department, the hospital... I've even been working with the federal government. I believe the governor has even sent in the National Guard. I have incredible resources at my disposal. But to be able to access those resources, I need to get to my office... and for some reason that I can't understand, I can't seem to step more than a few feet away from you." He took a deep breath, then said, "I can find your daughter, ma'am. But first, I need you to take me downtown."
The woman simply stared.
