Lights, Camera, …What?!? Book 1 Chapters 2 and 3 by Sofia Hammerstein

Connor Slane has grown up to be one of the brightest kids in his dimension and one of the most ambitious computer science majors at his top university. Now, thanks to an exchange program between his university and his mother’s alma mater, Emerson University in another dimension. Connor has the chance to forge his own path in computers and his other love, filmmaking. Having seen still images of their amazing holographic films, he hopes go to Emerson, and then return to build his own empire - and maybe even find his true self, as his mother did.

Beth Sylvester is a Tweener herself and another child of influential parents in the other dimension. Her wealthy Big mom is the daughter of a disgraced former CEO, and her dad is the first and only Tweener to serve on the Supreme Court. Connor’s mom and Beth’s dad were good friends while she was in the dimension, and they’ll quickly discover that they enjoy hanging out with each other. They’ll also discover that if either is going to survive to the end of the semester academically or as mature adults, they’ll need to help each other out. If not, Connor could quickly find himself on the one-way road to being adopted by some Big, and Beth might not be far from that fate either…

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The Legal Stuff: Lights, Camera, …What?!? By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Copyright © 2023-2026 Sofia Hammerstein.
 

 
 

Chapter 2: Stats
 

BETH FOLLOWED HER parents out of the terminal to the waiting Luxuria limo her dad had reserved. It was a comfortable and secure vehicle that had become necessary when he traveled, due to his status as a Supreme Court Justice. They even had a bodyguard in plain clothes following them at a short distance, just in case something came up.

‘I’m glad Daddy has his dream job, but seriously there are some nutjobs out there!’ Beth thought to herself. They had made a quick trip to the restrooms when they got off the plane, before walking to the luggage claim area. She was the only one who needed actual suitcases to bring stuff back to school, so her parents had used their family’s baggage allowance for a couple of other things.

Jason was in a hurry for some reason, like always, so he hustled to be the first one inside the large car. Laura stayed alongside her and their parents as they pitched in, carrying her large suitcases. As she got inside the vehicle, the holographic avatar Luxuria let her sit down and buckle up before asking, “Would you care for any refreshments?”

“No, thank you,” she told her.

“Very well,” she said.

“Justice Sylvester, would you care for anything?”

“A cup of coffee would be nice,” her dad told the hologram. “You should have my settings on file for that?”

“Yes, Your Honor, we certainly do.”

Beth’s dad soon had a to-go cup of coffee in his hand. He drank the hot beverage alongside his wife as the vehicle made its way through traffic and to the hotel they were staying in for the night. The hologram passed off their luggage to an awaiting holographic attendant when they arrived. ‘These newer holograms are so lifelike you clearly don’t need humans or robots for this anymore!’ Beth mused to herself.

It had no problems picking up the suitcases and placing them on a cart. The hotel had been prepaid, and there was no reason to stop by a front desk. The holographic attendant led them upstairs, and they were soon settled into a two-room suite where Beth’s mom and dad had a room to themselves, and she shared a room with Laura and Jason.

He wasted no time putting his bag down on a bed and claiming it, leaving the other bed to the two girls. “Do you think Mom and Dad will be ready to get dinner soon?”

“They said we’re meeting Aunt Megan, remember?” Beth told him.

“Oh… I forgot about that,” Jason said. But then, his smile brightened, “She has nice toys!”

“You mean Meggy has nice toys!” Laura kidded.

“Well… I guess they are really hers… Some are Sam’s, though!”

“And I’m sure she’s going to kick your butt in every one of those games again, too,” Beth felt like she needed to needle him.

“It’s not fair! I have to like study and stuff… she gets to just game all of the time! She doesn’t even have to stop to use the potty!”

“I’m sure Mom could find some diapers that fit you,” Laura told the younger but taller boy.

“You little…” Jason rounded on Laura threateningly.

“Ahem…” we all froze at the sound of Dad’s voice.

“Hi, Daddy,” Beth said with a smile.

“Settling into the place like a normal set of kids, huh?” He looked up at me and asked.

“Just like at home!” Laura said innocently. From the corner of her eye, Beth caught the cute angelic smile Laura used to wrap him around her finger. ‘We all know he wouldn’t ever say no to me, but Laura gets her way almost as much!’

“Ready to go then?” their Mom came in.

“I think they are,” her dad smiled at her mom.

“We’re going to Aunt Meg’s place, right?” Jason asked.

Beth watched her mom shake her head, “We’re actually meeting them at a restaurant. Amanda and Fred are supposed to be there too.”

Beth watched Jason’s face fall, “Oh, well then, I guess I won’t get a rematch with Meggy…?”

Their mom laughed, “Take your headset; she has one too. You two can play with each other while we’re waiting for food. Just no shouting out loud when she beats you!”

Beth shook her head, grabbed her purse from where she’d stuffed it inside her backpack, and followed her family down to another waiting vehicle. ‘Aunt Megan’ was really just a close friend of her dad’s that had become like an aunt to them growing up. Meggy was kind of their cousin by that metric, but actually her parents’ age and one of her dad’s best friends from college. Aunt Megan had adopted Meggy to keep her safe during Meggy’s last year of college. Other than the diapers, bottles, and other baby treatments that seemed to have petered off over the years, Meggy was more or less just a stay-at-home gamer these days. She was quite talented at it, and won major tournaments regularly over the years, while managing to keep her real-world identity as a Little secret! About five years ago, they’d even bought a holographic caregiver system so she didn’t even have to go to daycare anymore.

It didn’t take all that long to arrive at the restaurant in question, and soon, everyone was embracing one another. Aunt Megan was just a few inches taller than Beth’s own seven-foot-seven-inches, so it didn’t seem all that awkward for her to hug the bottle-haired woman. She noticed that she seemed to have gained a few more wrinkles since she’d seen her last. Amanda was shorter than their Mom and just an inch taller than Jason. That meant she was still taller than just about everyone else! They each carefully hugged the taller gray-haired woman who somehow still looked younger than her seventy-two years would bely.

Fred was hunched over a bit as he hugged everyone, his receded hairline, wrinkles, and gray hair definitely made him look like his seventy-four years had passed. He walked with a cane, but still seemed to have given Jason a solid handshake based on how her brother shook his hand out!

Beth looked down at Meggy as she hugged the woman who just reached her waist with the top of her head. It truly felt like Beth was hugging a toddler with a three-foot difference in height. Designer nanite treatment options had become all the rage in the past twenty years for Littles. Being able to change just about any aspect of a Little’s appearance appealed to most Bigs in her experience, and she’d seen some dreadful choices they’d forced on some of them before the passing of the most recent laws. Aunt Megan made plenty of money practicing law and could have done anything to Meggy, but the only thing modified on her was a rejuvenation treatment. It had been a present to Meggy for her fiftieth birthday, which she had been excited to receive. Now she looked like she might have still been a teenage Little with the healthy skin, hair, and muscles visible. Beth merely hugged her when she came by, but Laura couldn’t help herself - picking her up and placing her on her hip like a small toddler to cuddle. With the treatments, Meggy’s body looked a couple of years younger than Laura’s.

Leelah was next on the hugging train. Her thirteen-year-old pseudo cousin was about six inches shorter than her still. She looked pretty in a blue dress covered in pastel flowers that would have looked great in a smaller version on her ‘baby’ sister. Sam, her brother, just looked awkward as his nearly nine-foot-tall frame was still new to the fifteen-year-old. Beth grimaced as the poor guy almost knocked over her Dad as he shook his hand. Her dad laughed it off, though, used to gangly teenage boys still learning their sizes!

When at last, everyone had greeted each other, they were led to a private room for their meal. Beth sat down next to Leelah, Laura, and Sam, while Meggy and Jason sat next to each other and instantly started talking about games. Sam was in the middle, and while he spent most of the time talking to Megan and Jason, he occasionally turned to join the girls too. Leelah, Laura, and Beth had a typical teenage girl conversation about boys in their lives. Both gave Beth a hard time about not having a boyfriend at all in her first college years, but she just shrugged, “I haven’t found the right one, honestly.”

“You don’t have to marry them. Just date them!” Laura said to Beth.

Beth was grateful when the food arrived, but when everyone was eating, she heard Amanda say to her Dad, “You hear about Stacy’s oldest son coming to Emerson this semester?”

Her dad nodded, “Yes, she sent me a message. I’m hoping maybe he and Beth can get together and study during the semester.”

“If he doesn’t come through as a Little!” Sam said.

“Why would that matter?” Beth asked.

“Because they never let Littles actually make it through college, everyone knows that!” He looked at his ‘baby sister’ as proof. “They’re always catching them in some trap?”

“Your Aunt Stacy made it,” Aunt Megan told him.

“Only because Aunt Amanda was there helping,” Leelah said.

“Maybe…” Amanda said. “I think Stacy would have made it on her own probably regardless. I tried to get the university to let Connor stay off-campus like we did with her, but I think someone was mad at her graduating and added a new rule there.”

“So, if he’s a Little, he’ll have to be in their dorms?” Beth said, worried for anyone in that situation.

“I’m afraid so.”

“How tall is he in their dimension?” Beth asked.

“Six-foot-six,” Amanda said. “Doesn’t mean anything, though. Stacy was about six feet before she came through and ended up smaller than Meggy and Bella.”

They often talked about ‘Stacy’ in their family when they reminisced about college. From what Beth could tell, Stacy, Meggy, and their dad had been a trio who hung out a lot. Her dad hadn’t really understood when Meggy had wanted to give up, but had always been grateful that Megan had ultimately adopted her. She glanced at her dad, remembering he had also been ‘adopted’ by their mother for a time due to a court order. Back when he was fighting for justice for Beth and her mother… her real mother that she couldn’t remember.

‘Part of why I haven’t dated anyone is I still don’t even know who I should like… I mean, I used to love my own daddy apparently before my brain was destroyed and I ended up being put inside my mom’s womb…?’ Beth shook her head. She was glad her parents had told her the truth, and she really did think of them and love them as her parents, but it definitely helped shed some light on odd things that would feel familiar every now and then in her life. The first time she’d stepped on the campus of Emerson, for instance…

‘I wonder what Connor will be like?’ she couldn’t help but wonder. She knew Amanda, Megan, and her parents wanted to try and see him the next day and help him go shopping for things.

‘Maybe he can be my boyfriend to help take the heat off the comments…?’
 

I STUMBLED FOR just a second as I landed on the other side of the portal. It would be like just walking through a hallway if it wasn’t for the static charge I had felt for a few moments. Then, opening my eyes, I looked around and smiled as I recognized that I had made it.

“Please don’t stop. Keep moving forward,” I heard a voice order.

I did so and rounded the end of a metal ramp down to the floor. A tall woman looked down at me, “Name?”

“Connor Slane,” I told her.

“Mister Slane, please follow those green lines on the floor to the arrival exam point.”

I saw the lines she mentioned go off along a wall and into a hallway. Given how soon after I followed the last person when I walked through, I expected to see someone behind me, but there was no one. “Where is the next person behind me?”

“There are about two minutes of time lag in the portal. So the next person will be here in about a minute.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said.

“Go ahead and find the exam room, please,” she said with the kind of smile women always reserved for a cute kid.

I sighed and followed the signs, wondering how tall the woman had been. She had seemed enormous, and I wondered if that was just because she was that tall or if I had shrunk.

I was hoping I’d shrunk rather than grown; honestly, I hated being as tall as I was back home! ‘And I hate everything else about being me!’ I thought darkly too.

I was deep in my thoughts as I walked down the hallway, following the green line. I had grown up looking like I must be the perfect athlete, but I hated sports from the time I was enrolled in them. Coaches at my high school had always tried to get me to go out for basketball, track, football, or anything. Finally, I’d given in with mom forcing me to at least try swimming for the school like she had done. I’d even made it to a bronze medal at State my sophomore year but flatly refused to do it my junior and senior years. Every time I swam with the team, the team uniforms just made me hate my body more. I did keep up my swimming, but only at home with my family in our pool.

Tae Kwon Do was the only ‘sport’ I did stick with. Mainly so I could avoid being killed by my sisters, who loved sparring with our ridiculously dangerous mom. All four of us had our black belts by the age of eight. Riley and I both had our Fourth ‘Dan’s’ by the time we were seventeen. She liked the competition aspects of the discipline, but I tended to just train and spar without the need for the contests. I’d won several big tournaments myself back in middle school, but it just wasn’t fun to deal with the attitudes of so many of the other competitors. Also, most of the time, we had final rounds of me versus Riley… As much as I enjoyed kicking her butt, I never liked being the one to take her down and make her lose a competition. When I was fifteen, I told my moms’ that I just wanted to study – Riley and my sisters could have the competition!

To my relief, Mom had completely understood and agreed with my decision!

I stuck with band through my middle school and high school years and insisted to Mom and Mama that I was doing something outside of academics then. I’d also joined a film club our school ran. I even did reasonably well in a state-wide filmmaking contest for high schoolers in my senior year. Between my grades and those events, I managed to earn a full ride to college. That meant the funds my parents had put aside in trust would be available to buy a house or something when I graduated.

My musing was stopped at a reception area where a woman dressed in scrubs was handing Amy a hospital gown. I felt my blood turn cold though at a realization, ‘She’s the same height as me!’

She turned, and her mouth dropped open, “Connor?”

I nodded and looked up at the nurse, realizing I probably had shrunk that much!

“Move along, please. Nurse Elsie over there will take you to your exam room.”

I watched Amy get led away, following another tall nurse, and looked up at the one in front of me.

“Name?”

“Connor Slane,” I told her.

“Full name?”

“Connor Stacy Slane,” I said. ‘If I had to end up with mom’s girly family name that three generations of men had, at least it’s a middle name… couldn’t it have been a better girl’s name, though?’

“Birthdate?”

I responded to several other questions in a row from her before she eyed me up and down and reached onto a shelf for a hospital gown. The gown was a plain blue color that seemed relatively inoffensive.

“You’re going to follow Nurse Elsie to an exam room. When you get there, please change into the gown. We’ll do your check-up after that.”

“Umm… Thanks,” I said as I turned to follow the same giant Amy had followed.

“Hi, Connor?” She asked.

I nodded, “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Elsie; it’s nice to meet you! Welcome to our dimension! We’re just going to do a normal check-up to see how your body reacted to the portal and do a general health scan.”

I nodded, “Okay.”

She opened a gigantic door, and I could tell that I was in the true danger zone with my size as I looked up at an exam table and couldn’t see the top. Counters, door handles, chairs, and everything else seemed ridiculously high to me. ‘Just how short did I get?!?’

“Please put on that gown, and I’ll be back in a second to get your scan started.”

She motioned to the gown I held and closed the door behind her. Not wanting to see how quickly she would like to ‘help’ me, I decided I wouldn’t waste time changing. As I pulled my clothes off, I couldn’t help but note that my skinny body had not grown any chunkier in the portal. If anything, my ribs seemed a little more visible now on my sides. I couldn’t tell if my musculature had changed any, but I wasn’t even sure how I would be able to check that. I left my socks and underwear under the gown and prepared to remove them if asked.

I was just folding my clothes and placing them on a too-large chair in the room when she returned. “Done already?” She smiled, “Good!” Her voice seemed to naturally squeak a little higher into a baby talk range, and I grew even more nervous about this new size.

“By the way, where’s Doctor Benson? Wasn’t she supposed to be here?”

“She got held up in her own exam. We were told to just move things along? It might delay things by a couple hours if we wait?”

I sighed, “So, what next?” I asked, trying to get things over with.

“First is a full-body medical scan,” she told me. “I’ll need to get you up here on this table. Do you mind if I help you up here?”

I shook my head nervously, “I guess I don’t see how I’m getting up there without help.”

She smiled, “You did come in smaller than average.”

I held my arms up to her like I’d seen kids do all of the time. She gently picked me up under my arms and stood me up on the exam table surface. She centered me on one different colored square of the vinyl table and said, “Stay still for a moment!”

I watched as she stepped back, “Begin intake scan.”

‘Intake…?’ I thought nervously.

I saw a quick flash of light around me that was red. At the same time, a weird tone sounded, and a display showed up flashing red around an image of a human body around its groin.

“You still have your underwear on?”

I nodded.

“We need them off for this scan.”

I sighed but said, “sure.”

I was about to reach for them myself but was beaten to the punch by her large hands that lifted the edge of the gown, pulled them down, and sat beside me. “You can have your undies back in a second,” she told me.

I didn’t have a chance to respond before she said, “Resume scan,” to the interface.

“Scan complete. Subject healthy.”

“Destiny, please display vitals and health history.”

I looked at the air in front of us. A virtual projection displayed everything from my measurements to my hair and eye color.
 

Connor Stacy Slane

Age: 19

Pre-Arrival Height: 6’6”

Pre-Arrival Weight: 170lbs

Arrival Height: 48 inches

Arrival Weight: 58 pounds

Eye Color: Hazel

Hair Color: Blonde

Blood Pressure: 110/78

Pulse: 80 Bpm
 

My jaw dropped at those stats!
 
 

Chapter 3: Reality Check
 

“I’M ONLY FOUR feet tall now?!?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, you are a little one, Connor... Forty-eight inches is quite small, even in Little terms. Amazing how random the changes seem to be. You were well into Mid height before you left. I would have expected you to be at least a foot or two taller than you are now.” She shrugged, “Seems to be impossible to predict how things will go. Fortunately, the university will have small uniforms for you while you’re here.”

I grimaced at knowing what a Littles uniform meant for me, but had long accepted that it was a likely possibility on this trip.

“Go ahead and put your clothes back on, and we’ll get you to the room where you’ll be getting room assignments and everything.”

“You act like you do this every day?” I asked her in surprise.

She shrugged, “Not every day, but we’ll do an exchange group through the portal two or three times a year. We have three other university groups arriving this week, about forty exchange students in total.”

My eyes lifted at that knowledge, ‘Mom mentioned universities were Little mills…?’

I shook my head as she left the room, and I quickly put my underwear, pants, and sweatshirt back on. Not a minute after throwing my backpack back over my shoulder, the door opened, and another nurse in scrubs opened it up. “Ready, Mister Slane?”

“I think so!”

I followed the new giant down the hallway. My vision was low enough that I was sure my head didn’t even reach the top of her thighs! I had to take about three steps for every stride she made, and I felt like I was putting in jogging levels of exertion when she finally pushed open the door to an area where most of the group was present.

“Connor, right?” a girl I vaguely remembered being named Mia said as she stared down at me.

I nodded

“What happened to you?” she giggled, “You were the tallest person, and now you look like a kid even compared to me!”

I grimaced, “Apparently, my family likes to shrink a whole bunch when they come here… My mom is seven feet tall back home, but here she was only barely above three feet tall.”

“How tall did you end up?” She asked as we stood in the room that seemed to be a small classroom.

I blushed, “Four feet even…?”

She laughed, “Well, you and Amy will be good friends then, I’m sure!” She pointed to where Amy was blushing and talking to Willow. She was probably a foot taller than us, I guessed.

“This will be so awkward,” I told her as a very tall Amazonian woman with a severe bun entered the room.

“Please take a seat,” she said, motioning to the long counters and chairs behind them. I found myself awkwardly clambering onto the giant seat and then being hardly able to see above the counter!

I glanced around and could see most of our group was there, but two of the guys and Dr. Owens were missing. Then, finally, the incredibly tall lady cleared her throat and got our attention.

“First of all, welcome to Emerson University, and what I hope will be an incredible learning experience for you these few months you’ll be joining us. I am Dean Northrup, the Dean of Little’s here at Emerson. The woman just walking in is Doctor Emma Greene. She’s the Director of the Dorm your rooms will be in. If you’re wondering, your other friends are meeting with a separate Residential Director to get them situated. We split your professors between you so they can assist before we get them to their faculty housing assignments. As soon as we get all of that taken care of, we’ll meet up for a luncheon with our other exchange students.”

I glanced over at Dr. Benson, and she also looked to have shrunk quite a bit during the trip.

“So, first of all, let me make sure you know that our dimension is sized very differently from yours. You probably noticed it was a struggle just to climb into those chairs, and several of you, including Mister Slane, can barely see over the counter…?”

I blushed as all eyes seemed to zero in on me.

“No one really understands how traveling through the dimensional portal affects height, but the end result is that all of you are considered ‘Littles’ legally here in our dimension. We have three separate categories for grown adults here; Bigs, Mids, and Littles. You may hear Bigs called ‘Amazons’ by some, it’s generally frowned upon as rude, so I would recommend using ‘Bigs’ when you converse. Mids are often called ‘Betweeners’, or ‘’Tweeners,’ here. All of those are considered okay in polite conversation. Essentially, everything here is designed and built for the height of us Bigs. It’s easier to fit a Little’s smaller body in a larger space than a Big into a space that’s too small for anyone but children.”

I saw a hand go up and wasn’t surprised to see it be Mila’s.

“Yes, Miss Olson, right?”

“Yes, ma’am, just out of curiosity… what age of children are we the size of…?”

“Well, you, in particular, are smaller than our average two-year-old, but no one in this room is bigger than our average three-year-old.”

I heard several group members breathe out in surprise, but I just nodded and thought back to some of my talks with Mom, ‘And that makes me about the size of a six-month-old?’

“As you can imagine, this will make getting around at times challenging in our world. Due to this factor, we’re giving you dorms in our New Little Housing at Sanders Hall. This is a brand-new dormitory that we opened just this last fall dedicated to serving the needs of our shorter students.”

I couldn’t tell, from their reactions, if anyone in the room knew how bad that could be going for everyone in this room. Of course, I had hoped to retain my height and be in a standard dorm, but I had also steeled myself for losing a few inches and barely missing the required height. ‘Missing by feet wasn’t what I expected, though!’

She continued on, “For our new Sanders Hall, our rooms are a bit different than you might be used to. You’ll be sharing a communal dorm room containing our revolutionary sleeping pods with nine others. Also, all of the furniture is scaled to your sizes in your ‘nest,’ as we call them. Each nest has a residence life staff member in charge of helping you live, study and stay on track to successfully finish the semester!”

‘This is where Mom would probably be laughing in her face…’ I thought, barely keeping a smirk off my own.

“We have to share a single room with that many people? Are showers communal too?” Luca asked.

“They have privacy walls around them, but they are in one room attached to your Nest room. There’s also a bathroom with five potties to give you close access when you need to go to the bathroom. One thing that Sanders residents also have are four jetted bathtubs that you can soak in too.”

“That sounds nice,” the blonde-haired Tatum said.

“Now, you also need to be aware that our Little students are also bound by a separate code of conduct. Since you are here for this semester as Emerson University Griffins, we require you to follow that same code of conduct.”

She gestured with her hand, and a projection filled the air behind her. ‘Wow! They’re using holographic tech to replace old-school slide presentations!’

Little Rights for Visitors popped up above a few projected Little students in the university’s Littles Uniform. It looked unchanged from Mom’s time, with the three girls shown in the variations of the skirt and blouse, summer dress, and the slacks outfit Mom said she never wore. They looked like characters out of an old British school film back home. Nowadays, even in Britain, this uniform style had faded away as a relic of the past.

“That’s so cool,” I heard Liam say.

“Huh?” One of the girls asked, perplexed.

“The projection, not the uniform,” he quickly backpedaled.

“Oh, that’s right, you haven’t seen this technology before, have you, dear?” Dean Northrup asked.

We all shook our heads, even though this was precisely the tech I had wanted to come and study for filmmaking. The hologram made the projections look like real people with as solid and realistic as they appeared! The text beside them was suspended next to it, as if in some sort of comic bubble.

I returned my eyes to the image of the Little boy in his slacks, vest, shirt, and tie. Without context, that outfit didn’t necessarily make the guy, who appeared college-aged, look like he wasn’t an average adult. However, I did notice that all four of the characters on the slide had puffed-out bottoms, and the one with the dress looked like it had just a little bit of white hanging below the skirt.

“First of all, you’ll notice a uniform present for our Littles. I’ll go into that here in a few more slides. But I want to cover your rights and protections while you’re here studying with us.”

Guardianship popped up on the slide. “First of all, due to your status as Littles, Emerson is considered to have guardianship of you during your time here. This allows us to intercede on your behalf for any medical or legal issues you may encounter. It also prevents you from being adopted as long as you are a university student without your permission.”

Luca’s hand flew up, “Adopted?!?”

“I’ll get into that more later. Please just be patient. You have many rights and protections that should keep you a student as long as you are here studying.” She looked around, and I felt like she made it particularly unpleasant to ask questions. “We have insisted on this clause in particular for any accidents that may happen given your next of kin back home probably won’t be able to respond in time. Any situations where there needs to be an opinion due to your incapacitation would come to my office.”

I squirmed a bit at that, hoping she was a better person than the Dean was back when my mom was in school.

The slide switched over to a new one with the model students now sitting at 3D desks, seemingly occasionally moving and making gestures that they were paying attention. Well, all but one of the girls were paying attention. The one wearing the slacks version of the uniform looked to be doing something on a tablet instead of paying attention to the professor.

Demerit System was now showing as she continued, “For our Little students, we operate on a Demerit System for any behavioral or academic issues. Our current policy is that our Littles get up to thirty demerits in a year before being expelled from Emerson. Since you are here for just a semester, that number is set at sixteen. You earn demerits for any behavior that is unsafe, breaks academic standards, or brings the university into a bad light.”

I watched as a bubble popped up that showed examples that seemed a bit normal, got draconian, and then caused my fellow travelers to gasp.
 
 

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you did so and press the Kudos button! I should be posting a couple times a week until this is fully posted here on BC. This first full novel is complete (73 chapters plus Epilogue) and published on Amazon if you wish to be impatient though!

All of my published works have AI read audiobooks available for them. I’ve spent some time tweaking pronunciations, and they’re pretty good when you can’t afford thousands to pay for audiobook creation! They’re a $1.99 add-on to the $6.95 price on Kindle. If you’ve already purchase the book it should come up as only $1.99. They’re also available on Audible directly, but that’s $10.95 versus the cheaper price! https://www.amazon.com/author/babysofia