Jeff’s mind reeled at the possibilities. Imagine the job prospects for someone who doesn’t need equipment – who can move earth and lay concrete with their bare hands, or weld metal, or even fuse carbon. Jeff could make himself a human power-plant and provide energy for the world! And he’d get all the credit for such great skills, because he would have the properties of those objects whilst still looking completely human, completely like himself. Amazing!
Jeff scrolled past option after option, leaning closer and closer into the screen as the opportunities blossomed in his mind.
Something niggled at the back of Jeff’s mind. All of the useful options kind of overwhelmed him but the ones that stuck in his mind were just demented. As he agonised over what transformation to pick, his mind kept going back to the ones he knew would be the most horrible. A little voice in the back of his head kept telling him to pick things like “toilet”, “underwear”, and “garbage can”.
Eventually, Jeff gave up. He was morbidly curious about what it would be like and he couldn’t get those options off his mind. Deciding he could easily just undo whatever changes he made, he clicked on “garbage can”.
He looked at the other variables and checked the box marked “reality shift” after seeing the small info-box that was next to it. The infobox explained that a reality shift would change the world around him to make his transformation seem normal. It made sense to him to make the world think this was normal, otherwise he’d never get used.
He took a deep breath, then hit the “confirm” button.
Suddenly, he felt nauseous. He felt like he was on a rollercoaster doing loop-de-loops. The room around him seemed to undulate and swirl. Jeff felt breathless. His body tingled slightly. He couldn’t concentrate. Then, just as quickly as it all started, it stopped, and Jeff was sitting there in front of the Chronivac. Jeff took stock of his body. Everything was the same as it had always been. He glanced around at the room. It was the same, completely unchanged. Jeff shrugged and decided to head out to see if anything had changed at all. Maybe the Chronivac was a dud after all?
The minute he stepped out of his room, his older brother walked past and crammed a banana peel in Jeff’s mouth. Jeff almost choked but found himself swallowing the peel. He was disgusted with himself. He decided it best to undo the transformation before he got anything else nasty shoved in his mouth, so he turned around to go back into his room. A cold chill ran down his spine. The door to his bedroom was gone, a blank wall in its place.
‘Oh no you don’t, mister,’ Jeff heard his father say downstairs, ‘you’re not going anywhere until you take out the trash.’
‘Gawhd dad,’ Jeff heard his brother respond, ‘the can ain’t even full.’
‘Don’t you backsass me!’
Heavy footsteps followed, before the brother roughly grabbed Jeff and carried him under his arm downstairs and out to the curb.