Nathan steeled himself to go through with his change, but before he activated the device he did have the foresight to move the Chronivac from the tabletop to the floor beneath the table.
He chuckled to himself as he placed the device on the kitchen tiles. "That would have been a really stupid mistake," he said aloud. "Imagine putting the Chronivac out of my reach!"
Proud of himself for using some degree of careful preparation, and feeling even more dedicated to experiencing life as a mouse, he reached down to press the activate key. What he had missed, however, was how his fingers wrapped around the device had moved one of the gauges to the right when he transferred the Chronivac from tabletop to floor. Trans Dem Labs had caught this design flaw in subsequent models, but that didn't help Nathan who blissfully launched the transformation into motion without being alert to the fact the setting for his mental awareness had been accidentally changed.
He felt the changes start somewhere deep within the core of his being. A gleaming stainless steel toaster on the kitchen counter acted as a mirror as he watched some of the changes, including sprouting of white fur all over his body. He stared at his reflection as his human features changed leaving him with dark button eyes, a pink-tipped nose at the end of a short snout, and an explosion of delicate white whiskers.
"It's working," he thought. "The..." The name of the device escaped him. "The thing really works."
Nathan felt increased excitement even as his thoughts grew increasingly tenuous. As bone and muscle shifted, there was sharp sensation. His excitement dulled the pain, but it was still not an entirely pleasant process. Fortunately, it was a quick one.
His clothes began to envelop his shrinking body. The process finished with a dramatic spurt of change. A few seconds later a tiny white mouse with a long tail crept timidly from a pile of clothes emptied onto the kitchen floor.
The powerful scents clinging to the fabric of the clothes unsettled the small creature. It twitched its nose and scurried across the floor. Its nose worked in overdrive, mapping out the world around it with an acutely developed sense of smell.
It didn't care for the sterile scent of the metal and ceramic object it found in the shadowy regions beneath the towering structure in the center of the room. It stared at the very view screen flashing a warning that subject had chosen to undergo the change without any human awareness. The words and lights, of course, meant absolutely nothing to the tiny white rodent. It caught a more curious scent and scurried toward an old, dropped piece of dried pasta. Pleased with its find, its tiny teeth nibbled at the tube-shaped piece of macaroni pasta.
The world was very quiet, but the little creature remained on full alert as it explored throughout the vast house, taking a wide detour around the mound of fabric to which such disagreeable smells clung.