For the first fifteen minutes, Jake walked (trotted?) back and forth in the small dorm room, doing nothing but watching his legs move. His modified genitals swayed to and fro, and his tail swayed happily in the mirror.
He grunted with pleasure. The Chronivac’s work was beyond realistic, with surgeon-like precision. Every strand of hair - every fiber on his hide - had essence and feeling. His hard-built hooves were obviously new but looked worn, as if he had walked on them for years. And, of course, his cock - it was as statuesque as a horse’s, but fit well on the frame of his contradictory build. At the rim of his waist, and above his thighs, the fur faded away into the lumpy but comparably soft skin of his human body.
This tool was awesome - life-changing, even. Didn’t it say all he had to do was type the name of someone into the system, and then use a tag system to pick changes? He had become like one of those valiant half-human mythological creatures from science fiction books. Like dragons, or fauns, or those bull monsters from Greece.
Jake flexed his triceps in the mirror and rotated on his left hoof to pose. He couldn’t get enough of his leg musculature. He’d lift one leg up in the air, and his tail would curl up to accommodate the shift in balance. Then he’d sit on the floor, all the way down on his haunches, just to spring back up and feel the rush of air and the blood course through his veins.
Before he knew it, he had spent an entire hour gawking over himself. The Chronivac made a beeping sound, which broke his mental state enough to look at something else for a couple moments. Then he realized his body was changing again; his feet were shrinking in length, and his hair was falling out or fading into the skin.
Damn, he was changing back? He stumbled over changing legs to his computer desk. The Chronivac displayed the message, “One (1) hour non-Save limit reached. Reverting change ‘Horse legs’ of ‘Jacob B___’.”
Apparently he had not saved the change in time, so it was reverting it. He clicked off the warning message and reviewed the particulars, but found nothing about this except the Save button. So he half-heartedly clicked the little floppy disc icon - it greyed out, but his legs continued to shift back into human. And now the little mouse pinwheel icon was processing something that he couldn’t interrupt despite his frantic clicks.
Jake’s toes started to emerge from the grey-clod hooves, and he could wiggle them freely. More saddening, his long and beastly cock was coming out of its sheath and shrinking back down to a more manageable but less impressive human size. Jake was testing the feeling in his toes when another screen prompt came up. It said, “Change ‘Horse tail’ Saved. Apply Reality Adjustment to default proximity? Yes/No/Cancel”
Ah... As if on cue, he felt the swish of his equine tail over the hairless landscape of his behind. The tail was an independent change from his legs, and the save must’ve applied to the tail but not the legs. So... what was this about proximity and reality adjustment? Well, only one way to find out. He clicked Yes, and the dialog closed.
And that was that. No other messages or loading screens came up. Only a few seconds passed by, and he was looking down at his rather average but completely human body. Everything looked how it had previously. He was back to normal… almost. The only difference, which couldn’t go unnoticed, was a horse tail with long shimmering hair brushing against the backs of his calf muscles. Jake sighed; he was figuring out this program, slowly but surely. However, he found his mind… drifting back to his cock...
Right as he was debating what he’d do about that, the doorknob to his bedroom turned - and into the room burst his roommate, Vince, and two of his friends.
“Shit!” Startled, Jake shot up from his chair, but his tail - tucked between the backrest and the seat - inadvertently locked him in. The change in balance made him fall back down. By that point, it was too late.
“Yoooo, Ja - WOAH! Guys, look at Jake!”
Jake was frozen in place, horrified that not only was he in nothing but a shirt and boxers, but that he had his boxers pulled down under his tail, which was in clear view.
But Vince was… unphased.
“I told ‘ya. I TOLD YA. Wouldn’t believe me ‘less you saw it? There.”
“Holy shit!!”
Vince sensed that Jake was not too happy about being a spectacle, so he changed his tone a bit, hand rubbing his neck out of guilt.
“They didn’t believe the tail thing, Jake. Sorry to put you on the spot. But uh… well, you’re out and flailing it anyway!”
One of Vince’s friends (Alex?) was completely silent, mouth agape, eyes fixated on his ass. The other guy, whose name was Cyrus, didn’t want to shut up but couldn’t figure out what to say.
“Damn… what’s it… can you move it? G… damn…”
Throughout all this, Jake was looking back and forth between the computer screen, Vince, and the unannounced guests in his room. It wasn’t the reaction he expected, because somehow… Vince knew about his tail. Was that due to the reality adjustment?
“C’mon. Give ‘em a demo and then we’ll leave you be. We’re watching the new Sir Vivor episode in the commons room next door if you wanna join. Sorry again for making this awkward.”
Without much thought, he willed the tail to swish back and forth; the silky, black hair draped on the floor. It swept across the tiles like the bristles of a broom; the foreign tactile feeling was still difficult to comprehend but definitely pleasurable.
“Fuck, man! He CAN fuckin’ move it. Holy shit, Vince!” Cyrus slapped Vince’s back, as if congratulating him for proving some untold truth. “Dude, you… you got the craziest roommate ever!”
Vince mouthed ‘Sorry’ to him as the three guys finally left the room and went down the hallway to go watch the commons room television. Jake quickly got up and ran over to the door, shutting it completely before anyone else caused a similar commotion.
As his breathing returned to a normal speed, Jake got lost in his own contemplation, his horse tail in hand. His fingers grazed against the tail’s flesh and ran through the length of the delicate charcoal-colored strands.
‘Okay; you got to save a change after you make it. Then the software allows you to … make others believe the change? Adjust reality?’ Distractions aside, if he saved a custom change, nobody had to know how it happened; they’d just know. Could he delete or make modifications to an existing change? And what exactly did Vince know about his tail? Given the mysterious circumstances of this software arriving at their dorm room…
There were indeed many mysteries to unpack, and he had the entire weekend to do it.