His eyes widened.
“Oh…”
His heart stopped beating...
“No…”
… and he felt a sickening in his stomach. Wherever his stomach was.
The Blue Screen of Death.
He didn’t know what to do. He racked his brain, recalling his troubleshooting skills … what was most important was assessing the error message. The computer itself had just errored out, while in the middle of using the Chronivac. It could have been a hard disk or memory overflow error, or … something. He recalled the Out-of-Range error that had popped up earlier, which could also have been the cause.
Ultimately, he would need to record the error message and restart the computer. There was no coming back from a blue screen. This meant he’d have to reopen the program. Then, hopefully, there were some error logs to tackle, or a restoration procedure.
Should he call the lab first? There was no need to panic, he kept telling himself. Don’t panic. This was all part of testing beta software…
...But he wasn’t in a normal situation!
Okay, settle down. He took a deep breath, his entire body settling. He would restart the computer, open the program, and analyze the situation. If there were any concerns, he could call the phone number for the lab and work with them to get everything situated. He should probably let them know that the Chronivac arrived, after all.
He was standing upright at the desk, which proved using the computer a bit difficult. Slowly testing his mind and body coordination, he sat down his horse body to the floor, carefully folding his legs underneath. The process gave him chills because he was going at it like he was operating delicate machinery, and he was simultaneously sitting down as a horse and upright as a human. For a brief moment, he forgot the situation he was in, because the feelings of his new body were overwhelming.
Nevertheless, he pressed down the power button, and the computer shut off. Upon pressing it again to turn the computer on, he felt a wave of dizziness. But just as it came, it went away. Maybe the change was dehydrating him… he had a bigger body to take care of. Or he was developing a headache from his anxiousness. Interestingly, the computer desk seemed the perfect height for his new body, as if the desk considered someone of his... body shape. But Ben was too anxious and unfocused; he shouldn’t care about this, he needed to troubleshoot the software.
The computer rebooted without any problems, and he logged into the system. The desktop background of his … vacation… appeared on screen.
His jaw dropped.
Since last summer, his desktop background was a picture of himself on vacation in Florida, grinning from ear to ear in front of the Daytona Beach pier sign (taken by his then-partner). He knew it well: a party cloudy day, red hat, white shirt, and red shorts. But the photo on the screen now… it looked exactly like that, but he had a centaur’s body instead. The red shorts were gone, but he was still wearing the same red hat and white shirt in the photo.
He blinked a couple times, just to make sure he was seeing it right.
The reaction he had to seeing himself in a photo made him fully aware of his equine parts again. His right hand had been absentmindedly rubbing the muscles of his front leg. He sensed everything, from the front to the back. There was *so much* to him now. It was overloading his mind, and the freshness of the transformation lingered.
He shook his head. Concentrate! “Okay… open the program…”
The Chronivac was still installed, thankfully. The device was still plugged in, so a “Searching for device…” message quickly popped up and then disappeared.
One of the problems with the software - he had received no instructions on how to use the product. It was part of the company’s “strategy” for their beta testing, but it helped diddly squat after a fatal crash. So he had the program loaded, but it was acting kind of funky - the settings were all defaulted, as though it hadn’t been used before.
A few moments later, an error message appeared.
“Error: No transferable subjects found. Searching again in 30 seconds… 29…”
What was this? No “transferable” subjects found? What did that mean? Ben sarcastically rolled his eyes… *perfect*. There must be something wrong with the scanner now; it wasn’t picking up any nearby bodies.
Okay, well… Plan B? There were some menu options at the top of the window, and after a bit of skimming the list, he found the Restore option. He clicked the button, which worked before on his hair color change. But upon doing so this time, he was greeted with:
“Error: No restore found.”
Ummm… excuse me?
He clicked it again.
“Error: No restore found.”
...Shit.
Well, now he was definitely worried. Either the software didn’t create a restore point after the changes, or the restore function wasn’t working, or the restores were wiped or configured incorrectly when the computer crashed.
This wasn’t a battle worth fighting, and he was desperate to get out of this situation. He grabbed his cellphone, and from the Chronivac’s “About” page in the software, called the long distance number.
After a few rings, a pleasant, calming female voice picked up the call. “TransDem Laboratories. How may I transfer your call?”
“Uhh… well…” he started, nervous and conflicted as all hell. “I’m … trying to beta test the Chronivac software. I need to talk with someone to troubleshoot some issues.”
“Oh! Is… is this Ben Jensen?”
He sighed a breath of relief. “Yes.”
“Okay! Hold on, I’m handing the phone over to Yanush. She’s the one you want to talk to.”
After just a few moments, another lady with a heavy accent answered. “Hello, Mr. Jensen. How’re the hooves feeling?”
Ben meant to say hello, but the greeting threw him off guard.
“Uh… w-wait, umm…”
“Pardon?”
Ben shook his head. “... Okay, never mind, I… had a fatal crash with the Chronivac after testing a transformation. Blue Screen of Death and everything. It may have been caused by having gone out of range during the transformation processing time. I’ve also been experiencing a variety of errors after the crash.”
“I see…” Yanush replied, typing away at her keyboard. “And what transformation were you testing, Mr. Jensen?”
He gulped. Well, this could be a bit embarrassing. But he had no choice.
“The… the Centaur Transformation package?”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Well? That would be your problem then, yes?” Yanush asked.
Ben’s eyebrows furrowed, with an absent-minded flick of the tail.
“I… I don’t understand, sorry.”
“If I used the Human Transformation package on myself… Nothing would happen.”
Ben blinked.
“...And so testing this behavior could be leading you to the fatal error.”
“Wait a -”
“Can you send us the log files?”
“Wait, hold on…” Ben said, rubbing his eyes. “That’s not quite... There’s a problematic bug here or something. And there does not seem to be any log files; there’s no record of my tests, even the ones I did before this. It’s as though I just installed the software; everything is on default.”
Yanush’s vexatious tone could be sensed through her reply. “Under no circumstance, even with a fatal error, would there be a situation where the computer deletes the log files. You must be misunderstanding something with the software, or you have set the files to record to a different folder than the default.”
“I’m sorry, but …”
“..Or you haven’t actually performed any tests yet. Log files don’t get created until the first transformation is run... but you know that.”
“Yanush… I haven’t been given any instructions here!” Ben complained, his voice raised a bit higher now.
“Mr. Jensen, be advised that we are not authorized to provide documentation in this phase of the testing, even over the phone. Even if we had documentation to give, we are still in the process of writing it for this version.”
Ben felt a massive headache coming on, and cramps from… somewhere down below.
“This is a very sensitive, secretive project. We sent the product to you first because we determined you were best for this job.”
“Yes, sorry, I understand that…” Ben reiterated, “... but what do you mean by having used the Centaur package being the problem? I need you to help me troubleshoot this and, uh… return to normal.”
The clicks of the keyboard on the other end of the line stopped for a moment, going eerily silent.
Then she spoke.
“I meant the package is unusable… for you, at least. You are what you are.”
And then it clicked in his mind.
“W-wait a second… I’m … I’m not…”
“... and so it sounds like you tested the Centaur package, no change occurred as expected, but the system failed. Correct?”
“No! Not correct! I changed into a centaur!”
There was no immediate response.
“I’m not… supposed to be a centaur!” Ben shouted.
“Listen, Mr. Jensen… I’m not quite sure what you’ve discovered in your testing, but you're not describing anything to me that makes sense, and it doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere over the phone. The only thing I can suggest is that you create a reproducible case of the issue and send us screenshots, or a video.”
“I can’t do that, it’s too late!” Ben exclaimed, exasperated.
“Do you have any of the error messages you described?”
“Y-yeah, there was… ‘No transferable subjects found’ and the Restore button wasn’t working! Please, you gotta help me here…”
“Calm down, Mr. Jensen... No transf- ooooooh my, well, I think I understand the problem now…”
Thank God, Ben thought. “Yes?!”
“My apologies, this is a complete oversight on my part. The emitter searches for human subjects when it’s looking for ‘transferable’ subjects, and you’re not human.”
…
“WH…”
“...Please mail us back the software and we will mail you back a revised version soon with this bug fixed.”
“What?!?”
“Or actually… meeting us in person would be better. Yeah, bring the emitter to us, please? We’re in Cityville, which is about two hours from your hometown, right?”
“Yanush, please… help me change back, now! I’m supposed to be human!” Ben was literally yelling into the phone at this point.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to test, Mr. Jensen, but we need to fix this bug. It doesn’t sound like you’re able to use the software at all.”
His panicked, shocked breaths were all that he could muster.
“Okay, Mr. Jensen… we will see you at our office soon. Don’t get too stressed out about all this… and keep those hooves clean!”
“Wait! NO! Don’t hang up! I can’t do that!”
But it was too late. The phone line went silent.
He was stuck as a centaur. The realization swept over him like a wave of heat. For whatever reason… they thought he had always been a centaur. And the Chronivac couldn’t pick up his signal so that he could change back.