Then they heard another voice. They could vaguely discern that it was Carl Clay the sales clerk. Mr. Tutti was giving him instructions. Each generic mannequin boy then felt himself being lifted rather awkwardly. They did not know it but Carl was following Mr. Tutti's orders and putting brightly colored mismatched speedos on each of them.
Then they heard Mr. Tutti giving detailed instructions for how the five identical, featureless bodies should be posed tomorrow morning. Then he was gone. Carl started to pose the boys in place as they were to be posed out in the window. Tony felt his arms being moved over his head and his body being shaped into a gentle arc, as though he'd just leaped in triumph.
But Carl stopped there. He was deeply troubled by Mr. Tutti's decision and what had happened to these boys. He didn't really look on them as boys. They were more like contemporaries. Carl was only 20 himself.
And there was something else. The first boy, the one they had all been patterned after was just so good looking. Looking at that body the first time and then five times at once, something had crumbled in Carl. Maybe it was a sort of resistance or self-deception. Carl had never had many girlfriends but he had certainly enjoyed the ones he'd had. But he didn't have one now and somehow there had always been a lingering curiosity in the back of his mind. He saw the guys in GQ and L'Uomo Vogue. He subscribed to Abercrombie and Fitch to get that catalog. He knew a girl at college who might be just right for him. They'd only met once. But before getting into anything committed like that, well, that boy was so beautiful. How could anyone not notice how hot he is, that face, that ass? Why would it be wrong to want him? A boy so beautiful as that and not effeminate in any way, none of the negatives that Carl associated with 'gay' applied to that boy. In ancient Greece, they were all bi. It was no big deal to have a wife and admit how gorgeous some boy was.
Carl sighed and looked at the sandblasted, fiberglass coated, painted boys. This isn't right what's being done to these boys. It's not right.
"Fuck it" said Carl. He went out to the storage locker where Jeff's car keys were. He tried to open the locker but couldn't. He tried to pry the thing open but couldn't. He grunted an expletive and resolved to just try and get the chronivac thing out of the trunk without the keys.
Carl jogged out to the street and located the kid Jeff's car. It was a seriously distressed Olds Cutlass. This thing will practically open without my having to break into it, thought Carl. But it didn't. Carl tried to force it open with one hand under the edge of the trunk lid but the faded paint and rust thing would give way. Carl glanced around. He had a pen knife with him him that belonged to his brother. His juvenile delinquent brother. He flipped it open to the right tool and jammed it into the lock and turned. The trunk lid opened. Atop a blanket, Carl found a laptop computer and a funny sort of antenna with a thick rubber base wired to it.
Carl brought them both into the back room next to the display window where the five now generic plastic bodies were stored. He plugged it into an outlet. Carl was okay with computers but not great. The computer booted up and Carl looked for some kind of a chronivac shortcut. But there wasn't one. He had to search and find it among the saved programs. But when he clicked "Chronivac 4.0", the whole computer seemed to whirr much louder.
It took a few minutes for the Chronivac program to boot up. While he was watching it, Carl heard another employee come to the doorway.
"Hey Carl, we're closing. Are you almost ready?"
"Oh, uh, I'll use my keys to lock up the door to the street. I've gotta do a bunch more stuff here for that new guy, Tutti"
The other employee nodded sympathetically and then left. Carl started studying the help menus that went with the thing. He had gone through more than he could remember after a half hour's time and still wasn't quite sure that he would operate it right. But he didn't think he could remember another instruction anyway. So, he tried the scan function. He pointed the emitter at the nearest body, the purple one. There was a line across the middle of the screen.
----ASSESSING SUBJECT-----
A whole series of text flew by too fast to be read. Carl thought he saw a line or two about difficulty in confirming identity. Finally, the laptop beeped and the screen switched to a naked picture of the boy.
ANTHONY ST. MARTIN
REGISTERED PROFILE 1
16 YEARS OLD
6'1" TALL, 171 POUNDS
BROWN HAIR, GREY EYES
IQ 149, STRAIGHT
There was a line that could be clicked for "additional data". Carl clicked it. It gave every possible measurement of his body including ankle measurements and toe lengths along with some personality information. Carl noted that "Anthony St. Martin" rated 97 on a scale measuring "intellectual curiosity" and a 70 in "general inhibition". There was a whole series of things on what the kid could do in sports. Carl read a few and then decided to just get on with it.
Carl chose the menu for making a change to a subject. He pointed the emitter toward the purple body. Behind him, he heard someone closing the metal gated door to the store and saw the lights go out in the doorway.
"Okay. So . . I want to . . restore subject to previous profile. But which one? He's been a bunch of things."
Carl was a bit confused by the series of options presented. Finally, he had to click on a profile or type in a profile number. "Well, didn't it say he was profile one?" Carl reasoned out loud. He typed the "1" and just kept hitting enter to accept until things started.
Immobile Tony, the whole surface of his body still feeling on fire, suddenly felt the familiar electric wave pass through him. His first reaction was to say 'Hallelujah'. But as the transformation started, he immediately recognized something. He was turning into a jackass again.
"No! Jesus Christ! Why does this always happen to me!?" he fumed.
But this time was a little different because he was encased in fiberglass. He felt his mannequin body turn to human, his gaseous insides become human organs and then, painfully, his body struggling against the fiberglass as it tried to expand and become a much larger jackass. He feared he might end up with a series of broken jackass bones, but finally, his huge equine gut and great jackass rear smashed open the fiberglass. With a furious bray, Tony was free. He kicked his new hooves and bit with his huge mouth of teeth till he had himself free of it. Bits and pieces remained in his coarse hair and he saw that he still had on the orange spandex speedo. At last done assessing himself, he took notice of the clerk.
"I . . you . . I-I don't know what to say. You-you were supposed to be yourself. I wasn't trying to turn you into a-a donkey. Really. You-you are you, right? You're Anthony St. Martin?"
Tony nodded his head. Carl wanted to be sure.
"Just, um, checking, but, nod twice, then three times, then twice again to prove it"
Tony let out a jackass grunt then did as instructed.
"Um, is there any way you can communicate to me how to get you back to normal?"
Tony walked over to where he could look at the screen. He could see that he'd gone for a simple restore, but instead of restoring to Tony's registered profile. He'd restored to profile 1. The first profile in the chronivac was the jackass that Emma Chase had turned him into. She'd erased his old Tony St. Martin body and his first time as a greyhound. His real body now was his registered profile and not a numbered one. The guy had just made a mistake.
"How 'bout this?" suggested Carl. "I'll tell you what I did and you just make a donkey sound when I get to a wrong step" Tony grunted and nodded and accidentally drooled on Carl. "Oh man! That was vile!" said Carl wiping it off his arm. "And you really really stink man, like worse than any animal I have EVER smelled"
Tony let out a sigh, trying to communicate his regret and Carl seemed to get it. Carl went through his steps of using the chronivac and when he got to the choice of profile number one, Tony brayed.
"But you're registered profile number one on the computer. I thought I was picking the number to match that" Tony brayed. He traced a rough "R" on the carpet with his right front hoof.
"R? For registered? You mean I can pick that one" Tony nodded. Carl went through the restore process again and when it came to picking a profile got ready to click on the registered profile. But he stopped.
Tony looked impatiently at him. Keep going guy. I'm stuck as a fucking jackass here, in case you've forgotten.
Carl spoke, first sheepishly but then quite naturally. "Be-before I do, I want to ask you for something. I've gone way out of my way to help you here. I might end up getting fired from this job and it's not like I have a ton of money lying around to pay for school without it. Anyway. You're . . you're very handsome and very athletic. You're-you're very attractive. I-I've never done anything with a-with a boy. Maybe it's just curiosity. But will you? With me?"
Tony groaned. I can't believe this. I have to do it with him as the price for becoming human again!
"I-I could say that I won't turn you back unless you will, but that's a lie. I would anyway. But you . . the whole thing intrigues me. I'm kind of hoping you'll consider it a way of saying thanks to me"
Tony let out a jackass sigh of resignation. He nodded at Carl. With that, Carl hit the enter key and Tony felt the wave pass through his ugly equine body. In a half minute, the last vestiges of hide, hair and hooves had disappeared and he was himself. He checked in a nearby mirror to make sure that sandblasting, painting and fiberglass hadn't left any permanent mark on him but there were none, except for the orange speedo he now wore.
He looked at Carl. "Just curious?"
"I've had only girlfriends before. I've always kind of wondered, though and you . . " Carl's eyes lit up as he finished.
Tony sighed. "There's only one way to do this right" he said and pointed the emitter at Carl to do a full scan of him. He showed Carl his profile, including the fact that Carl was straight. 80th percentile along the scale of 1 is gay, 50 is bi, 99 is straight, Tony noted.
"That's really straight?"
"Yeah"
Tony saw Carl's mood brighten. "You still want to do this?" he asked. "Yeah" said Carl firmly. "You're . . well, my 20 points still want a shot at you"
"Well, I'm going to make you completely gay"
"Hey, wait"
"-and I'm going to make myself completely gay. Then we can do this right. There won't be any reservations. My friends are still stuck there. I'll have to be seriously jonesing for a boy to not stop to help them."
"I'm sorry. But, um, you won't tell anyone will you?"
"No" laughed Tony and he zapped Carl. When he had gotten to the point of changing himself and stepping in front of the emitter, he could barely hit the enter key for Carl kissing him and stroking his penis from behind.
In a span of three hours, they made love a half dozen different ways, each trying the top or bottom role. Carl was a good looking slender guy, almost Tony's height. He easily passed the fuckable threshold for insatiably gay Tony. And Carl's desire for model/athlete Tony was inexhaustible. They did all of it in a room halfway across the store where spare beddings and quilts were kept.
When they finally hit a mutually quiet, exhausted moment, Tony got up from the quilt where they both lay.
"Let's go. My brother and friends deserve to be let out"
"Um, did you ever do this before? I mean, you knew exactly what to do and yet your profile said you're straight"
"Someone got a hold of the chronivac before and turned me and my best friend, Jack, gay. We were just completely in love with each other. The person who did it was stopped but we decided to spend a night with each other that way"
"No shit. Really?"
"Yeah. We'd already tried to make it but I-I was too big for him"
Carl laughed "Yeah, that's a tight fit!"
"But the guy from the company who makes the machines suggested that we try it. The point behind the machine is to try different things and to understand who other people feel and how animals, like . . jackasses, I suppose, feel. It doesn't have any affect on what you really are, but you still carry that knowledge with you. It makes it impossible for me to give a gay kid a hard time at school. The way I got fucked? And loved it?" Tony laughed.
"Yeah, I-I didn't give kids like that any trouble anyway"
"The point is that there's no shame at all in a gay boy wanting a boy. Did you have any choice in the matter after I made you switch teams with the chronivac?"
"None" laughed Carl.
With that, Tony led back to the room where the other were still trapped. He put his orange speedo back on and zapped Carl and himself back to straight. He realized that the fiberglass coatings would be trouble for the others and decided to transform each into a 6" tall version of himself. As soon as that was done, he smashed open each fiberglass shell and let the diminutive naked friend out. He immediately zapped them all to full size and that was it.
With Carl's okay, they chose whatever items they wanted from Neiman's to outfit themselves and then exited the service entrance out onto the street.
The next day, Aldo Tutti arrived and found four shells and the devastated remains of a fifth. But no one could explain it to him. Carl had quit, it seemed.
A few days later, the verdict came down that the judges of the window contest gave first prize to Neiman's, for Ms. Chateau's scene using five Tony bodies. Mr. Tutti still told new employees that he had won it.