The Science Lab

You decide to check out the weird looking machine. It almost resembles a giant glass jar, but covered with scientific-looking buttons and greeblies. There’s a small screen on the front face of it, with a button that reads “push for demo”. You can’t help but push it. Immediately, a young woman’s face appears, prepared to give a presentation of some kind. You can’t help but think to yourself that a bowl of popcorn would be great about now. The woman smiles, ready to begin. She speaks in a voice that sounds artificially sweetened to 11. “Thank you for purchasing the temporal-accelerator, brought to you by LG. We’re so excited that you’ll be testing our top-of-the line equipment while exploring the reaches of space! Now, get ready for some testing, subject!” A sleek, gloved, robotic arm juts out from the side of the machine. Before you have time to react, it grabs you by the waist and pulls you above the cylindrical structure. The top of it flips off on a hinge, letting the arm place you inside before slamming back shut. You panic, pressing yourself against the sides to try escaping somehow. No luck. The voice continues in the background. “In order to properly determine the long-term effects of microgravity on the body, we used to leave astronauts in space for months on end. This proved expensive, and taxing on their morale. But now, we can get the same results in a matter of minutes, without any of those pesky psychological effects! This machine simulates the physical changes time has without the subject feeling a second out of sync! Let’s begin!” You begin to feel fuzzy, like something is glowing on you. A whirr resounds in your ears. Then, you notice yourself beginning to get... puffier. As if your body mass is redistributing. “In the first few months of space flight, microgravity causes body water to redistribute slightly.” Soon, your arms and legs involuntary begin to move towards your sides. It’s not binding at first, but it begins to intensify a bit. “Then, after a year, an astronaut’s physical strength is greatly reduced. It’s not uncommon for all parts of the body to begin evening out to the same size.” It was true. Your limbs all seem to be the same circumference as your head and chest. After a while, you can feel yourself begin to curl up. You again try to resist, but it’s useless. You can only barely move at all. “We don’t know exactly what happens after five years, but here’s our hypothesis: the water inside the subject’s body will conform to its natural surface tension, forming a spherical shape as more time passes. Eventually, it may even become indistinguishable from an actual sphere.” And indeed were those theories true. Your head, stomach, and everything in between had become nothing more than printed features on a yoga-ball; your strained expression now a watermark on its smooth surface. The lady chimed in one last time to wrap up her sales pitch. “Of course, to restore any of the effects this process has on a subject, we’ll have your “Temporal-Reversal machine” shipped to you yesterday! Hahaha!”

Balled!

You have found 24 Endings out of 24!