When I first read the description of what the flashlight did, I had been skeptical. I mean, there was no way magic was real, right? But after two successful tests, on myself and on Gene, I was starting to be convinced. Which meant there was something I had to do. Saying my goodbyes to Gene, I headed out of the mall and caught the next bus back to my dorm.
On the way, I read and reread the instructions for the flashlight, making sure I was familiar with the intricacies of how it worked. The head of the flashlight turned, clockwise for a more pink light, counterclockwise for blue, and the power button was on the bottom. With each turn the light made a little click, and there were ten clicks to a revolution, which meant there were 21 different settings for intensity. (There was one setting right in the middle which produced a very pale white light).
Something that I wasn't expecting, was that gender intensity and general sexiness were explicitly two different features of the light. Gender intensity was controlled by the dial, but sexiness was related to exposure time. So for example, if I pointed it at someone using the highest blue setting for just a few seconds, they would become super masculine, but about as conventionally attractive as they were before (although they might be attractive to different types of people). However, if I used a very low blue setting for several minutes, then whoever was hit would be more androgynous or possibly metro-sexual, but be incredibly sexy. The neutral setting was used to undo sexiness; it would affect the gender of the subject either way, but it would gradually reduce their attractiveness until they were average for their gender.
The way the flashlight affected sexual preferences and desires was also a little weird, but it made sense after I thought about it. The intensity of light would, when aimed at the genitals, change not only the physical appearance and biological sex of the target, but also change what they wanted in relationships. For example, men generally valued the physical appearance of their partner more than an emotional connection, while women are the opposite. The time of exposure, meanwhile, increased the lust of the person hit. The neutral beam would eventually leave a person more or less asexual; any colored beam would eventually produce and insatiably nymphomaniac. Sexual orientation was not affected by changing the person, instead it was made by changing their sexual partners. Every individual a person had sex with was invisibly linked to them in the eyes of the flashlight, so whenever a person was changed, their past sexual partner's preferences would slowly change to match.
There was a lot to digest in the handbook, and it wasn't a very long trip back from the mall, so by the time I was done processing everything the bus was dropping me off at my dorm.