Fifi thought the changes to her pet were hilarious, but the thought that this device to do even more was exciting to her. It had just been delivered today, and already she could have a pet of whatever mixed-up species she wanted. She wanted to play with the Chronivac for hours and see what it could do. But she knew that right now, she had to get back to working on her doctoral thesis.
Or did she? Sadly, yes. Fifi was going to feel like such a failure if she didn't complete her history major once and for all. But she didn't know if she really wanted to major in history anymore, even for a few more days. Studying the way societies had grown, changed, and deteriorated had left her jaded and cynical. She didn't have much hope for her own future or anyone else's. Looking around her bedroom, she had books on World War 2, when the United States had locked up Shibas in camps while Germany was trying to establish Shepherds as a global master race. She had books on pre-Columbian Central America, where Xolos and Chihuahuas had sacrificed each other on big stone pyramids. She had books about ancient Rome, where dogs who refused to worship the Emperor were fed to lions in the arenas, and books about early modern Europe, where alleged witches and ape-dogs were drowned or burned alive. Future historians would remember that, in Fifi's own time, oppression was in every corner of the globe even as the Western countries were bombing the planet, using their enemies' even worse canine rights records as an excuse. Wealthy countries were destroying the world with pollution, and poor countries were destroying themselves with corrupt dictatorships and superstitious practices from the past. Even high school students knew the gist of such things, but not so many people had study the sickening details of the timeless faults of canine nature quite like Fifi. As far as she was concerned, it was a terrible world, it had always been a terrible world, and no race in history was blameless.
Still, there was one book in Fifi's room that always made her smile when she looked at it. It was a book she'd bought right before she brought home Jeff (now Jess) just over a year ago. The cover showed an American white-back human leaping into the air to catch a toy while a Collie wearing summer clothes smiled in the background. The book was called "Human Training the Fun Way!" and it really had given her all sorts of ideas of how to bond with her new pet. In fact, to this day, the only way that Fifi could truly take her mind off her terrible studies was when she could stay home and play a fun game with Jess. She really had given her human a fun life, the kind of life she wished she could give herself: carefree, happy, full of games and toys and praise. Jess would never have to learn the things that Fifi wanted forget.
It was with a defeated sigh that Fifi minimized the Chronivac tab and returned to her unfinished thesis about the homophobic origins of a relatively obscure conspiracy theory regarding the assassination of President Charles Kennedy in 1963. A website about the president's personal life at the White House was still open, showing a picture of the charismatic Terrier out for a game of fetch with his beloved human Johnny. Fifi glanced at the idyllic black-and-white scene and smiled. She looked over at Jess who was wagging her fox tail and smiled again.
"You know what, Jess, I think I'm going to use this Chronivac some more after all. Let's make the whole world different. What do ya say?"
Jess barked and jumped up on Fifi's lap. Fifi laughed and clicked on some more settings in the Chronivac. She was going to change the world so that humans and dogs would switch roles, and reality would be altered so that dogs had always been pets for humans. She could finally have the carefree life she wanted, and she wouldn't have to understand anything about the millennia of constant bloodshed she'd studied. Sure, things like school and work would be Jess's problem now, but who knows? Maybe things would be better if humans ran the world. Fifi took a deep breath, clicked Save Changes, and saw flashes of light starting to glimmer over the world around her.
----
With some slight surprise, Jess found herself sitting in her computer chair, waving her fox tail and flapping her bunny ears while smiling at her pet Corgi. What was going on? Oh, right, it was coming back to her now. She had experimented with changing her race and gender and then decided to turn herself into a fox-and-bunny girl to try and amuse Fifi, who had seemed oddly subdued lately for some reason, like maybe she hadn't been eating well. The roughly four-year-old dog was looking up from the floor with a twinkle in her eyes and a toy in her mouth, looking as carefree as ever.
"I guess it seems to have worked," said Jess to no one in particular.
Oddly, though, Jess was a little surprised to still be sentient and still using the Chronivac. She felt sure that only minutes earlier, as a male named Jeff, she had tried to change the world into a dog planet. The idea of anthropomorphic canines was appealing to Jeff, as was the idea of being a pet. There was even this weird vision in Jess's mind about Fifi being a grad student, which felt like something between a fantasy and a memory. Had the Chronivac not worked? Had the changes been reversed or aborted somehow? Maybe it was just too big of a change to expect from a mysterious device. Jess looked back at the Chronivac to see what she could do.