Rebecca Vinton had always been careless. She was a brilliant molecular biologist, but still she was careless.
All through college, her professors marveled at her brilliance and her ability to outpace their knowledge in her studies, but they cringed whenever it was time for her to work on one of her experiments. You never knew what might happen. For example, the great Medfield College Science Lab fire of '89.
Even after her doctorate, she continued to wreak havoc wherever she went. But her intelligence was unparalelled and soon she was chief research scientist at GeneTech, Inc.
That's where her carlessness finally caught up with her.
Her weakness in life was her two cats. She had them for more than ten years and the felines had seen better days. It was obvious to her that they were nearing the end of their lives, and she couldn't think of living without them.
So, breaking protocol, she snuck her beloved cats into the lab one Sunday intending them to be the first subjects to try out GeneTech's new rejuvination beam. She put the cats on the lab table and set the power for a 90% reduction so her much loved cats would have a fresh start as kittens.
What she didn't check was the focus of the beam. Instead of narrow focus, it was set for a broad-beam.
And so instead of 30 year-old Rebecca, 3 year-old Becky got a fresh start along with her kittens.