After toying thoroughly with the app's settings and dials for a while, Jane decided to settle on devolving into something that she found interesting. Rolling the evolutionary dial back up, she discovered a stage that reminded her of a larger, bulkier chimpanzee.
"Ardipithecus." Jane read aloud for her viewers. The stream had spiked above ten thousand viewers in the last minutes, and her donations were going through the roof. Her eyes darted away from her computer monitor and back to her iPhone screen. A big DE-EVOLVE? button blinked underneath the 3D graphic that represented her devolved self as an Ardipithecus, the first ancestor after the human-chimpanzee split.
"Well, guys... Here it goes. I'll turn off the mental option in case this 'works'," She said, giggling mockingly. "...Aaaaand, GO!"
For a moment, Jane thought nothing had happened. The timer on her phone screen no longer displayed the actual date, it just began to go down faster and faster...
2018, 2017, 2016, 2015....
Jane frowned. Whatever happened, she wasnt...
2010, 2005, 2000...
In the monitor, her viewers were going insane on the chat. And Jane had a chance to see why:
"What the hell...?"
A different version of herself gret her from both her streaming feed and the cellphone screen. As the timer hit 1995, Jane saw her hair elongate into a disheveled mass of blond curles, a septum ring appearing on her nose and her stylish clothes replaced by baggy denim jeans, gray tee, a red flannel shirt and a pair of filthy looking Doc Martens.
But before she could even react to becoming a grunge version of herself, Jane's clothes and hair regressed further in time: the aggressive look of a glam rock groupie from the 80s, a punk getup straight of 1970s Britain, complete with a massive pink and red mohawk; a dirty-looking hippie from the summer of love, a greaser, a Rosie the Riveter lookalike...
1940, 1920, 1900...
As Jane became a poor Victorian woman, she attempted to speak, but found herself talking in the heavy cockney accent from her maternal ancestors; and it didn't stop there.
The transformation picked up a faster pace, now not onlt skipping decades but centuries.
1800, 1700, 1600...
The clothes of a puritan woman shifted into the plain dresses of a medieval peasant as the timer slid under the 1300s. Jane's natural blonde hair became a shade of lovely brown, her face reddened into the sunbaked and freckle-covered visage of a farm worker; and then changed again, this time leaving her looking like a pictish woman with blazing red curls framing a face with high cheekbones, a strong, square jaw and a slightly bulbous nose.
900, 500, 0...
The pictish woman continued to become more disheveled, and as the timer flipped onto the B.C. scale; she grew more muscular, rough-looking and hairier. Jane was conscious of it, and between the amazement and excitation, she managed to think how deep her family roots were entrenched into a northern European and seemingly Neanderthal origin.
5000, 10000, 20000...
Her clothes, composed of heavy furs stitched together and hide boots shrank down into nothing; as she left Homo Sapiens behind and sunk into Homo Neanderthalensis. Thick, red hair began to cover her body; her features grew brutish and her curvy frame had been replaced entirely by a blocky, musclebound body with sagging breasts, wide hips and a bulging belly.
And even then, the timer flew faster, going from 500,000 B.C. to a million years, and the Neanderthal version of Jane gave way to less and less developed hominids.
Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis, Australopithecus... Jane barely resembled a human being, and struggled to remain on camera after reducing in size to a staggering four feet. Her vocal chords were diminished to the point where only grunts and guttural growls came from her mouth; and in time, the Australopithecus devolved, too.
From bipedal proto human, Jane was left looking as a three and a half feet tall primitive ape.
SUBJECT: WILLARD, JANE.
GENDER: FEMALE.
AGE: 22.
SPECIES: ARDIPITHECUS RAMIDUS.
PERIOD: LATE MIOCENE
SETTINGS - PHYSICAL: ON MENTAL: OFF
DE-EVOLUTION TIME REMAINING: ONE MINUTE.