So, I know you have questions, or you will. If I just tell you what you think you want to know you would probably think I'm a creep, or a monster, or some heartless sociopath. This all started a decade ago when my dad died.
No, stop. Don't go there. I don't want your pity and I don't need your empathy. I need you to take this information and use it to understand my decisions.
So, I was three when my dad died. It was a motorcycle accident, a drunk driver hit him. I have one memory of him and for the longest time, that memory was repressed. I remember being three and screaming for my father, but then my mom was crying and I realized that me wanting my dad was somehow hurting her, so I stopped asking for him. Yes, I remember that.
Several years later when I was six or seven, I was playing with a kid and they asked where my dad was. I explained that I don't have one, I just had a mom. They then explained that everyone has both a mom and a dad. Mind Blown. actually, no, I thought he was pulling my leg so I asked my mom if I had a dad. Her reaction told me something was up. Yes, this is all very relevant to my story. So next thing I knew I was being sat in front of the TV and I could hear her whispering things like, "He doesn't seem to remember anything... Well, he was only three..." on the phone to someone.
Fast forward to when I was twelve and a half. Men have been in and out of my mom's life. Some men I liked, some I didn't. Some treated me great, some acted like I didn't exist. But it was about this time, I realized that I had nobody to teach me how to be a man. Not to mention that a google search on "fatherlessness" has a ton of statistics that made me feel like I had to do something.
Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I received this box called the Chronivac, and it promised awesome and amazing things. As a tween I wanted nothing more than to be treated like an adult and I was about to make myself one when I realized how unprepared I was. Furthermore, I realized that in five and a half years I would be an adult and had nobody to guide me to that state.
So rather than making myself into an adult I decided that I could still learn and grow from all my moms failed suitors. I set to work and got the machine to target any male my mom had a date with. Then it would pick between 0-10 skill sets, memories or attributes to copy to me. I wanted to refine the types of things to target for copying and found an option to turn my mentality into an algorithm the machine can use. Next, it asked for a few keywords to use, so I entered masculine and adult; not wanting to miss out on general adult things like driving a car I decided against using one keyword like manly. Finally, I decided to let my mental algorithm prioritize the traits to copy, assuming that nobody would have a better understanding of what I want than I would.
I set reality to change with me so nothing seemed wildly out of place in the world and that I would be aware of the changes that happened but the new reality would seem normal to me. If mom's date came within range of the 20 foot scanner (thankfully my bedroom was above the front door) It would scan them, select the traits, and apply them to me when I am within range.
In hindsight, I had already made a number of errors, but you understand, this was to make me become a better person than I could have by myself. I turned the machine on and the screen showed that constant scanning was active. I didn't realize this setting should have had a duration and now the machine did this one function which was to change me based on my mom's love life, and locked me out of everything else. I also didn't have the algorithm update based on the mental changes that occurred. So regardless of how I changed or what I want, I have a 12 year old version of myself perpetually trying to make me more manly, with no concept of what adulthood means. Finally, I didn't realize there was a queue of 10 changes. When Mom's date is in range, the queue fills. When I am in range, the queue empties. if we are both within range, I and reality change wildly until every trait my 12 year old self considered remotely worth copying, gets copied.
Unbeknownst to me, my mom had joined a dating group. Through this group, she would set up 0-5 casual dates per week to feel out what she was looking for in a guy. It wasn't intended to be romantic right off the bat, but encouraged socialization. She thought of all these interactions as dates and things began changing right away.