He activated the Chronivac unit before he lost his nerve. He felt the slightest prickling of nerves along his spine, and then his phone rang. Instead of shedding some clothing ahead of the imminent change, he found himself looking at the screen of his phone that he held in his hand.
"Great," he said, recognizing his parents were calling him. With enforced cheerfulness, he greeted them.
"Nathan, dear," his mother responded to his greeting. "Is everything good?"
"Sure, mom," he said. His nose twitched as his face began re-shaping into more of a snout.
"Wonderful," she said. "Your father and I are having such a good time. His business is going well, and I am helping all the stores have a good Christmas sales season."
His mother's shrill voice became even more strident as his new ears picked up her every word with crystal clarity. "That's nice," he muttered as he raced with the phone to the bathroom to be well placed to observe the accelerating transformation in the large mirror over the sink. He squeaked in shock when he saw a head and face already largely transformed.
"What was that, dear?" His mother asked in connection with the strange squeak.
"Nothing," he said quickly, in awe as he saw his white whiskers twitch as he spoke. "Just, uh, stubbed my toe."
He noticed the hand holding his phone was changing, too. He saw his hand looked more like a paw covered in white fur and ending in five skinny digits.
"Anything else, mom?" Nathan asked, impatient to more closely monitor the changes as his clothes began to slip from his dwindling frame.
"Well, dear, your father might need to stay around longer than expected," she said. "That might mean we don't make it home in time for Christmas."
"No problem," Nathan squeaked.
"Dear, the connection must be bad," she said. "I'm having trouble hearing you."
His pants slipped down his legs, which allowed a long tail to escape confinement. He grabbed at the tail with one of his free paws.
"Listen, mom. I'll be fine," he said, anxious to end the call.
"You could go to your great-grandfather's," she said.
Nathan saw that his entire body was now covered in short, white fur. He needed to end the call, but when he tried, he produced only squeaks.
"Dear, this connection is horrible," his clueless mother said. "Anyway, Merry Christmas. I'll call again."
Nathan would have wished her one, too, but the change concluded at that point, shrinking him down to true mouse size and engulfing him in his own collapsing shirt.
It was a tiny, twitching white mouse that crawled from beneath the shirt, stared at the phone that now looked like the biggest of flat-screen TVs, and realized the Chronivac had performed as expected.
"I'm a mouse!" Nathan realized with giddy excitement.