Riley shrugged his shoulders, looking up toward the ceiling, seemingly deep in thought. “Hmmm… well, how about this --” he backed away from the screen momentarily, sitting up.
“Okay, here’s the game. Each day, we get to make *two* changes. The first change, we make for each other… like, I choose for you, and you choose for me. Aaaaaaaand the second change… we get to use however we want.”
“What do you mean, ‘however we want’?”
“Oh! And also you can’t just undo the change that you or I do to each other. You can only alter it.”
“I still don’t get it…” Jeff started to feel a bit hesitant about the game.
“I mean, like... you can use your second change on anybody, or anything. Or yourself. Because that way, if something is changed about you that you don’t like, you can use it to change yourself partially, or make it better. Or whatever. But yeah! Like, you get changed, and then we live with that change for the entire day as if nothing is out of place.”
“Try to buy headphones for your ears, dude…”
“Y - yeah! Exactly… oh my god, I wonder what they’d say at the store…” Riley laughed.
Jeff sat up from his chair. “So… one change is for you, the other is for anything else.”
“Yep!”
“What constitutes a ‘change’?”
“It’s up to you. And to make it a little more interesting... “ Riley started again, seemingly inventing these rules at the top of his head, “...At the start of the next day, we roll dice. The highest number wins - that person goes back to normal. But the other has to stay changed. And then the winner gets to add on to the loser’s change.”
“Oh my god…”
“Yeah, I know, right? Like… I’ve already got a million ideas swimming around in my head!”
“No, I mean…” Jeff started, “I have no idea what the limits are on this… Chronivac. When does the game end?”
“Hmmm… let’s just do it for a week.”
“A week!?!?”
“Yeah!!”
Jeff sat back and thought it over a bit. He really liked the idea of messing around with Riley... He just hoped there would be no consequences to doing so. The Chronivac seemed like a complex yet fragile piece of master programming...
But he was far beyond curious. He wanted to try so many things! And if anything started to go wrong, there were controls to reset the changes and go back to normal.
But then again... should they be messing around like this?
“Five minutes ago you were freaking out about having donkey ears…”
“Yeah, until you showed me that nobody can freakin’ see them except you and me. Now it’s kinda cool.”
“So that’s a rule? Only you and I can see changes? That better be a rule.”
“Uh, YES…” Riley quickly confirmed. “If you change somebody else, or something else, only you and I should know about it. You just gotta click that Awareness check-box, right?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. And one last thing?”
“What else...”
“We gotta be able to actually play the game, dude, so… keep that in mind. For you and I.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know everything that the program can do...”
“Wow… that’s…”
“This is so unreal, dude.”
They stared at the computer screen in silence for a few moments, and at each other for a few more.
“Alright. Let’s do this!” Riley announced abruptly. “You first…”