“Me first?” Jeff asked nervously. “Hmmm… Well…”
Riley sat down next to Jeff at the computer screen, feeling giddy and ecstatic. Meanwhile, Jeff wrung his hands over the keyboard, debating what to do with this ‘first move’.
“I don’t know... what do you want me to do?”
Riley frowned. “Don’t ask me what I want! Just give me something.”
“But this is the first one...” Jeff shifted in his chair, pointing to his ears. “I guess… I mean, I messed with you before, so don’t you want to be able to choose something?”
Riley rolled his eyes. “No!… Well, okay, just… no donkey stuff!”
“Gotcha.”
Jeff sat there for a couple more seconds, hoping for Riley to give him something more. Then, as if a lightbulb went off in his head, he sat up in his desk chair. “Okay, I think I know what you would like… turn around. Or close your eyes.”
While Riley turned away from the screen and the Chronivac, Jeff typed the next change into the computer, and set the change up for a time of seven days. This meant Riley’s change would end after seven days, as the game had been set to last for a week. That was, unless it was changed or interfered with in another way, or if he won tomorrow’s dice roll.
“Seven days, only you and I are aware of this change. No pain, and uh…”
“No gain?”
“Not quite, haha… shut up and just wait. I have to use a different menu.”
“Oh, really??”
“Yeah.”
After the details were set, Jeff hit the button on the Chronivac’s UI to initiate the change.
“Okay! You can open your eyes, but don’t look at the screen.”
As Riley opened his eyes, he didn’t necessarily look or feel wrong, but something indeed was giving him a rousing feeling.
“I… feel a bit weird. Nothing looks weird though.”
“I’m only setting the changes to be 20 seconds.”
“I don’t … oh, well, I feel… am I getting bigger?”
Riley, who was athletic to begin with, was now a bit taller than before. But that wasn’t all; the larger change was the amount of muscle. The svelte and sculpted teenage body of Riley was beginning to look more like a developed football player, or an up-and-coming bodybuilder. The contours of his abs were visible through his shirt, which was now a couple sizes too small for his own good. Upon noticing this, he tugged down on it, but it was no use.
“I guess clothes don’t change… you made me bigger and ripped?”
“Why would they? And yes.”
“Nice!”
The time was nearly up. During those twenty seconds, Riley’s legs became well-toned, similar to his arms. His thighs were hard enough to bend metal with a moderate squeeze. Thankfully, he was wearing baggy enough shorts that were able to contain the added muscle and weight of his new body. And with his face, although Jeff didn’t notice much of a change, there was a visibly different complexion.
Jeff nodded and smiled. “Congrats. I think it’s done.”
Initially Riley smiled back, but he still felt the furry appendages on his head. “Aw man, I still have the ears…”
“Yeah?”
“Sooooo you just made me stronger.” Riley said, rather plainly. “I mean, it’s cool, I feel great - “
“C’mon Riley, there’s more! How do I prove it… umm, oh, I know. Take your wallet out.”
Riley’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why?”
“Just take a look! Take your license out. You should see something…”
“Different?” Riley finally turned around to Jeff and the computer screen, giving him a look of question. When Jeff returned the sly, slick smile, he complied and pulled out his wallet from his back pocket. “Uhh, well? I look … oh, w - damn! I’m… you made me 22 years old?”
“Yep!”
“So, I’m like… a college student now?”
“You’re a senior at the uni!”
“Holy shit!”
“I thought it’d be more fun than being four years younger.”
“Holy shit, dude…”
“Now you can appreciate those muscles.”
“By the way...”
He flipped around his driver’s license to show Jeff the details on the card. The photo was the “new” Riley, with a slightly tanner shade to his skin, some stubble, and much shorter hair. The young adult in him kept a clean-cut, but mildly shaven appearance. The donkey ears, which were disregarded by the aspects of the change, stuck out beyond the edges of the image.
“265 pounds. I’m a monster.”
He flexed a couple more muscles, his forearms bulging and testing the confines of his shirt sleeves. “I wonder if I’ll need to get bigger clothes?”
“Well, Alter Reality has to be turned on for all of this, so reality should’ve changed! I guess… the clothing on you didn’t? Maybe you got new clothes at your house.”
Riley smiled again. Messing around in front of Jeff’s mirror, he felt his six-pack through the fabric of his shirt. “This was a good one.” He began to take his shirt off.
“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on, sir…”
Riley laughed out loud. “You think I’m gonna keep my clothes on with a body like this?”
“God, you’re a cocky 22-year-old…”
He whipped the shirt off over his head, almost tearing it apart in the process. Jeff shifted a bit in his chair.
“Duuuu-hhhuuuu-huuuude. I’m ripped! What … what change did you type in?”
“Okay, it’s… a 50% increase to your muscle tone. Or whatever you call the muscle weight stuff. And then you’re four years older. That’s it!”
“Well, good!” Riley said, turning around from the mirror. “Next, you get to use your other change. Then it’s my turn. So hurry up!”
“Yeah, but… we haven’t scanned anyone else -”
But then Jeff remembered that he had scanned someone else in: His sister.
“Kristen.”
“Hmm?” Riley said, still gawking at his arm muscles.
“I can’t do anything on me, ‘cause you might undo it. So that leaves Kristen… she’s the only other person who’s scanned into the Chronivac.”
“Is that bad?”
Jeff scratched his head. “I... “
“There is LITERALLY no consequence here, Jeff…”
“Yeah, yeah…that’s not it. Just, you know… Kristen? Why the heck would I want to do anything to her?”
“You could do something that makes her less annoying... or teach her a lesson… or... ”
Jeff reclined back in his chair for a moment, pondering his thoughts. Another lightbulb went off in his head.
“Hmmm…”
Jeff clicked around the interface, looking through some of the alternative options of the tool. There were various package groups available, other than the DNA Splicer, Age Progression, and Muscle packages. Luckily it took very little time for him to figure out the tool for the change.
Meanwhile, Kristen was sitting at the opposite end of the house in front of the television, eating a steak sandwich and watching Sunday afternoon soaps. A seemingly brief jolt of energy surged through her veins, but it was gone before it had even registered in her brain. She shrugged it off and continued watching TV.
In the span of those few seconds, her hands began to shift in strange ways. It started with the thumb, which visibly split in half, until she had two thumbs on each hand. Her pointer fingers did the same thing, bending and splitting seamlessly until the additional phalange, if you want to call it that, inhabited the space. Then, finally, on the outside corner of her palms, above her wrist, a third thumb-like finger grew out and bent away, giving Kristen two eight-fingered hands that looked more like mutated human claws, and could probably mutilate a grapefruit with a simple squeeze.
Oblivious to these anomalies, Kristen went about her business, snatching up her food and humming away to the commercial break jingles while texting on her phone. She only needed one hand to type on the screen.
Jeff and Riley had been hovering behind the hallway entrance to the living room, quietly observing the shift with curiosity and awe - well, at least Jeff was.
“What kind of change is that?” Riley whispered.
“I thought it’d be… wouldn’t it be cool to have, like, extra fingers?”
Riley grumbled, and then turned back toward the hallway to Jeff’s room.
“Whatever. It’s my turn now!”