"I don't see anything about a time limit," Marcus said, "but are there instructions to this thing?"
Dan pointed his one arm to his bed--he and Jake obviously had two separate beds in the loft--and Marcus grabbed the instructions off of it. The three/two boys read through the instructions together to fully understand the Chronivac. The two main things that they read about was that there was no time limit to any transformation, and that they could change the settings to affect awareness--basically, they could set it so that any person being transformed would or would not be aware of this, and the same for everyone else except the people that were typed in to be excluded from being unaware.
"I didn't know that," Jake said.
"Well, let's make sure that everyone else is unaware that we're conjoined now," Dan said. "It will make them believe that we've always been two heads on one body."
The bros were perfectly coordinated as they moved their shared body to the desk--another feature of the Chronivac. They found the awareness settings on the program, and selected "everyone else" under "Who will be unaware?", after leaving their own names and Marcus' under "Who will be aware". After clicking "Save", there were footsteps from the other side of the door. Deciding to test the changes, the boys went around the corner to the end of the room that could not be seen when coming in the door. Marcus quickly minimized the Chronivac program, just as the door opened. The brothers slipped into their private bathroom, listening to what they heard across the room.
"Hello, Marcus." It was their mother.
"Hi, Mrs. Bronson," Marcus said.
"Are the boys in the bathroom?" she asked.
"Uh, I'm not sure right now," Marcus said nervously.
"Well, I don't want to burst in on them," she said. "Boys, can you come out here?"
Since Dan was on their right-hand side, he stuck his head and arm out the door, keeping Jake and his side inside the bathroom and out of sight.
"Yeah, mom?" he asked.
"Your father and I have to go down to the check-in," she said. "Will you guys be alright?"
"Yeah, we think so," Dan said.
"If there's one thing I like about you boys being two heads on one body, it's that you always have company," she smiled.
Dan and Marcus tried to avoid showing any visible reaction to this: the Chronivac had worked!
As soon as she left, the boys shut the door and turned to each other.
"This is awesome!" Jake said.
"Yeah," Marcus answered. "Just think of all the stuff we could do with this thing."
"Yeah..." Dan wondered.