I was blankly mesmerized by the screen in front of me, flashing and blurring as I slaughter through hordes of digital enemies. I had been spending the majority of my summer grinding away at the various new video games that had come out in May. I wasn’t proud of how I was spending my time, but it wasn’t like I could afford to visit my family, and I just felt generally demotivated to try and find women despite my friends’ best efforts to get me to do so. It’s not because I’m unattractive, because I’m not. I’m a solid six feet and three inches tall, and I have a rather stocky build. The only real complaint I have about my body was the lack of a six pack, I’m not chubby, just not ripped either.
I’m interrupted from my deep thought by the doorbell. I look up curious. I wasn’t expecting anyone or anything, though I suppose it could be a door to door salesman. I decide to at least get up to stretch my legs a little and take a glance at who, or what, it may be. I don’t see anyone through the peephole, so I open the door to find a package on the ground. I pick it up, it was labeled to me, but there was no return address, or any other indication of what it was or where it came from. I shut the door and open the package up. It was a smooth silver hard drive looking thing. There was also a small touch screen within the package, which vaguely resembled a touch screen phone, though it wasn’t any brand of phone I recognized. There were also two wires in the box. I take all of the components out, finding no papers that described what this was or how it worked. After spending a while looking it over, I found a tiny inscription on the hard drive which read “Chronivac 4.0.” It felt like it was some progress but it still didn’t mean anything to me. After some more inspection I figure out how the wires plug in, one was a USB cable for the hard drive, and the other allowed the phone to plug into the Chronivac. I figure there was only one way to figure out what this was. I get up.
I didn’t trust that it wouldn’t contain sort of computer virus, so I got out my trashy old laptop, which already had so many viruses that any potential virus on this Chronivac device might actually help the poor machine’s performance. Also, it didn’t contain any sensitive information, so I’d be safe. After letting the laptop turn on, I plug the Chronivac in. A window appears on the screen almost immediately, which reads “Select Target:” followed by a text bar with a blinking text cursor awaiting input. Not sure what to do next, I start typing my name in, and my heart jumps a little when it shows my name appears as a suggestion below the text bar. I calm down after a moment, realizing the program probably scanned my files and found my name, but it was curious that next to the name it has a little “1 ft away” labeled. I stand up and take a few steps back, and the number increases or decreases correspondingly to my distance from the machine. Feeling a little creeped out, I go ahead and click on my name, then the accept button.
It creates a new window, which contained things like name, age, gender, species, height, skin color, hair color, hair length, eye color, and so on. I gulp slightly as I realize all of the info was filled in, and was a perfect match for me. I wasn’t sure how the computer got this, and a part of me wanted to shut my laptop down and get this device as far away as possible, however, by the smallest margin possible, my curiosity won.
It was weird, as I keep looking through it, it seemed like there were thousands of stats, most of which got really specific, a lot of them weird or outright disturbing. They were mostly on slider bars, which reminded me of a video game character creator. Just out of curiosity, I decide to take the bar labeled “height” and slide it up by a foot. The save button in the bottom right turns green, indicating that a change had been made. I click the save button, and a window appears with options like “duration of transformation” and “awareness” and “reality shift,” whatever those meant. I leave them all the default. I click save again, and it says “transformation in progress.” I furrow my brow a little, when I suddenly feel a strange tugging in my torso and my legs. It wasn’t painful in anyway, but it was mildly uncomfortable. Soon the sensation ends, and I look down to realize my jeans and shirt were shorter. Or rather, I was taller. Suddenly it dawns on me what exactly this machine did. And it was really powerful, and is going to be far more entertaining than any video game. I look at the screen to see the window display “transformation complete,” and I click on the revert changes option. I feel opposite of what I did before as I return to my original height. Scrolling through the options my mind races with ideas, but what to do first?