"Yeah, my name is Tony St. Martin. I-I'm a registered subject profile there. I-I was created with the company's help after my natural body was erased by-"
Tony's younger brother was walking by the door on the way to his own room with an incredulous expression. Tony glanced at Jack, who quickly shut the door.
"Can you confirm the date of your profile creation Mr. St. Martin?"
"Uh, September 3rd"
"And your previous profile Mr. St. Martin?"
"Huh?"
"What were you Mr. St. Martin?"
"I-I was a jackass, I mean, not originally but that's what I was when I was transformed into the body I have now. I was a skinny 15 year old before that."
"Okay, I've got your profile up on the screen now . . you're very handsome Mr. St. Martin"
"Um, thank you."
"How may we help you Mr. St. Martin?"
"I-I dont' know how to start this. My friend Jack and I-"
"That would be Jack Sullivan? Five eleven 160 pounds, red hair, blue-eyes-"
"Yeah, that's him. We're both . . somebody's messing with us using my friend Jeff's chronivac. They made us dumber. They-they made us have this mania for ballet and . . they or whoever is . . turning us super gay for each other"
"You're sure that these aren't latent tendencies coming to the surface?" the woman seemed to almost chuckle.
"Yeah I'm sure!"
"I'm sorry. We'll send someone" CLICK.
"You'll what? When . . ?"
Tony slammed the receiver down and turned to Jack with a groan. "She said they'd send someone but didn't say when. How long are we-"
There was a knock at the front door. Tony looked quizzically at Jack who looked back with the same expression. He went to the window and pushed back the curtain. A guy maybe a couple years older than them, a bit taller, slender and with hair a brighter red than Jack's was at the front door wearing what looked like a burgundy bellhop's uniform.
There was another knock. Tony ran out of his room intercepting his little brother and pushing him back into his room. "I've got it."
He ran down the stairs with Jack right behind him and swung the front door open. The bellhop guy had a mini-notebook computer in his hands with no make or model indicated anywhere on it.
"Anthony St. Martin and . . John Francis Sullivan" He pronounced looking at his display and not them.
Tony turned to his friend. "John?" Jack nodded sheepishly.
"Yeah, that's us"
"You called claiming that someone is using your friend Jeff Walton's chronivac on you against your will?"
"Yeah, we did"
"Is there somewhere we can go with some privacy?" Tony nodded and led them up to his room. His little brother saw them enter and saw a strange man go into Tony's room. But Tony saw the man point his notebook computer at his little brother, type a couple keys and his brother fell onto the bed in a deep sleep. Just the same he closed the door behind himself.
Tony and Jack sat on the edge of the bed and the guy from TransDem Labs took a seat at the chair of Tony's desk. He typed away furiously for a minute before explaining "I'm calling up both of your profiles and checking for differences between your base profiles and your present condition." Tony and Jack looked at each other. Good. Sounds logical. They waited a few minutes more while the guy typed and intermittently let out a series of hmmmphs. Finally, he spun around to face them directly with the mini-notebook still on the desk.
"Okay guys. The person who did this. Just a minute-" He said and got up from his seat and walked briskly out of the house leaving bewildered Tony and Jack staring after him. He drove away down the street in a non-descript white car. A moment later, the same white car pulled up at the curb again. "What the fuck?" muttered Jack as they both watched him walk briskly back into the house carrying Jeff's computer and with a sleeve full of dvd's. He handed the dvd's to Tony and put Jeff's chronivac on the desk and took the seat at Tony's desk again.
"Alright guys. She's been dealt with. Emma Chase got hold of your friend Jeff's Chronivac and-"
"How?" asked Tony
"Um, you know the Steely Dan song "Ricki don't lose that number" that says to send it off in letter to yourself? Well, Emma heard that song the last time she got hold of it through Jeff's sister. And she did. She sent herself a long explanation of what it is and what it could do and who had it. Your friend Jeff didn't do a good enough job erasing the board as we like to say and she got back into the game. She might not have, Mr. St. Martin, but when your friends turned you into a perfect nude sculpture of yourself she saw you and the detail of your hair, pubic and otherwise convinced her that you were more than just the product of a chisel. She couldn't remember that. Jeff wiped that one out pretty well, but she had a stronger presentiment that the letter she'd received in the mail wasn't a prank. She followed your friend Jeff around for a while and partially saw the four of you turn into eagles. She found an excuse to be over at Jeff's house, a girl scout event, I think, and found the chronivac even though Jeff had hidden it pretty well. She figured out how to work it and figured out what had been done. Since you guys all registered your profiles with TransDem, She couldn't just turn you into a jackass like she really wanted, Tony. We know about anything that happens to a registered profile. But she guessed correctly that our level of scrutiny of non corporeal changes was a lot lower. So she decided to turn the four of you gay. And you are."
"What? But we-we stopped. We-"
"You were stopped by your penis being too thick to enter your friend's anus. You kissed and JOJO'd in the showers and kissed and tried to fuck in that back yard 40 minutes ago. You're gay. You still have enough remnants of your original personality matrices that you were repelled at what you were doing but that part of you is down to about 30% now. You'd both fuck me if I would."
Tony and Jack sat in stunned silence. Well, he was pretty cute.
"She slowly made you dumber in very small increments. The ballet thing was pretty ingenious on her part. She took the love of jumping that both of you have and slowly morphed your interest in baseball and basketball into ballet."
He turned to Tony. "You were terrific at it and you've got exactly the right body and rear for it. All those people complimenting you on how good you were at it were telling the truth. Emma didn't have anything to do with them. Why don't you give it a shot?"
"I don't want to be a ballet dancer. I want to be a baseball player if I can. And no matter what, now it's something that was done to humiliate me."
"Fair enough. And you?" He asked Jack.
"Me? I was not made for tights" laughed Jack.
"Okay" he said and pointed his mini notebook at both of them and, after a flurry of keystrokes, pressed enter. The white tights visible in the top of Tony's bag disappeared and there was a baseball glove in their place.
"Alright, I know you both want your full intelligences back, right?"
"Yup" "Uh huh"
There followed another flurry of keystrokes and the striking of the enter key. To Tony it felt the way his sinuses felt after taking a shot of nasal spray. Only it was his whole brain, seeming to open up. Both he and Jack chirped their enthusiasm for that change.
"Now how about trying the gay thing in private a little while longer?"
Jack and Tony both jumped up from where they sat on the bed.
"What?!"
"I'm not suggesting that you stay that way and I've already wiped out all memories and effects of the two of you kissing and being out in public. But part of the beauty of this machine is that you can experience something different and come back to what you naturally are with the knowledge of how that other type of person or animal feels. For instance, Tony, you're a virgin-"
"Hey!"
"-and Jack's had sex once. Aren't you both pretty curious what will satisfy a woman?"
"Well, sure"
His fingers flew at the keyboard and then he hit enter. Tony immediately started feeling very odd.
"What'd you do to us?" he demanded, his voice cracking. The guy just smiled. Tony felt himself shrinking a bit, becoming more slender except his hips which became less muscular but wider. He let out a whimper as his male equipment inverted into a vagina and small perky breasts emerged on his chest. Tony, now a naked Jennifer, ran to the mirror. Jack joined him at the mirror. He had became a naked version of a redheaded girl Tony had once seen him with.
"Now you're physically the girls you want to go out with. You could both be lesbian or one of you could be the other. For instance, Jack could morph into a copy of Tony. You can see how it feels to be the other lover"
Both Tony and Jack were hesitant.
"You have to stop seeing yourselves as your teenage boy selves when you use the chronivac, guys. Understand other people. If you're a woman, there's no shame in having sex with a man, in his being in you. If you're a gay boy, there's no shame in loving another gay boy. Use the chronivac to have fun, of course, but use it to understand, too"
His fingers flew across the keyboard of his mini-notebook. He hit enter with a dramatic gesture. In a moment, Tony and Jack were back to their old bodies though still naked.
"I'm not really supposed to tell you this, but Jeff and Eric are giving it a try for the night."
Tony and Jack looked at each other both with sheepish expressions meaning I will if you will. They looked to the TransDem rep and nodded.
"Cool. This will only last till 6 am tomorrow morning. Your parents have temporarily forgotten about you both. Jack, you can leave tomorrow morning and go back home and change for school. At 6 am, your sexual preferences will revert to your normal selves"
He looked at the two teenage boys. "Oh yeah, one more thing." He typed for several moments and Tony felt and saw his penis thin a bit. Jack laughed. "Much better".
"Don't worry, that'll return to its previous size and all physical effects of what you do tonight will go away at 6 am, too. "
"But we'll remember?" asked Tony
"Yeah, if you want"
"If we don't, how much do we understand"
The rep gave Tony a friendly pat on the shoulder and was out the door a few seconds later.
A few minutes later, the phone rang and the two naked boys, now entwined atop the quilt, quieted enough to hear Jennifer leaving a message asking Tony to call her. He rubbed his nose on Jack's beneath him with a smile. "After 6 am her, but tonight you"