Bryan picked up the laptop, carried it into the kitchen to continue studying the many options while getting himself a glass of milk.
He continued to explore the ways the Chronivac's programming could alter his on-screen persona. He decided to do something random but extreme, typing in a sequence to give his avatar a longer nose. He watched the nose grow and, on a whim, clicked ACTIVATE.
He felt a minor twitch that became pronounced as his nose began to expand from his face beneath his quite astonished eyes. By the time it finished, he looked like some bizarre human Pinocchio .
His hands reached for his nose, felt the tip of it. "Oh my god," he gasped. "It doesn't just affect the on-screen avatar. These are real changes!"
In a panic, he quickly reversed his enlarged nose, feeling the strange sensation as everything returned to normal. Bryan exhaled loudly. "That was... freaky."
He felt electrified as he began skimming more menus, before he noticed the amazing array of changes under a header of ANIMALS.
"Now, that could be fun," he decided and took a gulp from his glass of milk.
He clicked FARMYARD options. He read aloud some of the options. "Pig. Chicken... chicken! No way!"
He looked at others, considering for an instant a horse transformation. Then his eyes fell on cattle. Cow. Calf. Bull..."
Bulls were always impressive animals, exuding strength that in many ways mild-mannered Bryan envied.
He sighed in disappointment and looked around the small room. "I can't just transform into a bull here in the kitchen," he decided.
There were smaller options, like cat, dog, mouse, but he shrugged them off. Now that he had considered the notion, his mind fixated on bull.
An idea came to him. He finished off the milk and grabbed the laptop, carried it through the house and exited a door into the garage. Plenty of crates and boxes were stacked along the walls, but the garage still offered plenty of room.
"Why the hell not?" He placed the laptop on a work table scattered with tools. He hovered over the keyboard as he programmed for the change.
He read some of the breeds on a menu list. Not familiar with some of them, he did some quick research with his computer before he decided Charolais looked like a fun bet.
He proceeded very deliberately and carefully, not wanting anything to go wrong. He was very careful when selecting the duration for his change. Although he could have chosen 24 hours, a week, a month or longer, he didn't want anything quite so extreme. He set the duration for 30 minutes.
"That should do it," he said, shedding his shirt and proceeding to take off more clothing. He folded his clothes and placed them atop one of the storage crates.
Naked, he reached out and activated the program. He wasn't sure what to expect. He even began to suspect he had not clicked the right button, but then he felt some creeping tingles crawl along his spine and to his extremities. The changes accelerated quite rapidly. His pale skin toughened into a white hide that began to grow a coarse white fur.
His face began to change, widening, his nose and lips widening as his snout pulled away from his face. His eyes slowly migrated to opposite sides of his huge, flared nose. He felt a sharp but short-lived pain when two horns sprouted out of his skull.
At this point, his posture began to change as his spine changed, pushing him down onto all fours as his arms and legs changed into heavy limbs capable of supporting the stocky, muscled body of a Charolais bull. One of the biggest shocks was feeling the weight as his balls swelled and descended from his body, hanging heavily above the concrete floor of the garage.
"Oh god," Bryan tried to say, but he produced a loud, long bellowing that shocked him. He didn't know what he had expected. He hadn't really given any thought that the change would necessarily render him speechless.
He felt powerful, but he soon grew bored with the confines of the garage. The closed space also seemed to get on his nerves, and he had to exert some will to keep the bull's pugnacious tendency under control. It was harder than he anticipated. The bull seemed to have its own very strong will that wanted to compete for dominance with Bryan.
He was glad he had selected a duration of only 30 minutes, because he quickly became exhausted trying to keep the bull's bullish nature at bay.
At the end of the slated time, he noticed a blinking on his laptop asking if he wanted to now reverse the change.
Bryan bellowed.
Of course, he wanted the change reversed. Why didn't the program reverse the change?
Y/N. The option kept flashing, expecting him to select one.
He bellowed again from sheer frustration. He stared at the screen, wondered if he could possibly trigger reversal pushing at the keyboard with his big, clumsy nose. What choice did he have? It wasn't like he any longer had hands and fingers.
He slid his nose over the Y on the keyboard. No good!
He opened his mouth and let his heavy tongue hang out. He tried to push the Y key, but only introduced a healthy quantity of bovine slobber onto his keyboard and screen.
He was getting increasingly aggravated with the entire situation, and the temper of the bull, which had been lurking beneath the surface, used the opening to exert itself. The heavy animal, weighing more than a ton, began to lash out at its environment, kicking with its powerful legs, bashing at crates with its heavy head and horns. The flashing screen of the laptop seemed to particularly infuriate the beast.
Bryan felt like a passenger as he dully realized the destruction, but he didn't panic until the bull overturned the work table and he saw the laptop crash to the floor.
The result bellowing mingled Bryan's panic and the bull's waning fury. He tried to regain control, but he wasn't in time to prevent one of the bull's heavy hooves from landing on the battered laptop.
"Shit!" Bryan thought.