Alex was all grins, having uncrossed his arms from underneath his breasts. He moved over closer to David as they stared down at their phone. "C'mon, dude," he pressured amicably, looking down at the screen. David looked over at him. "Hey, it's your call," he insisted. "You... or me... or, you know both if you're feeling really daring," he smirked, wiggling his eyebrows in insistence.
"I just don't want to screw up the world," David insisted, running their hand through their short black hair, brown eyes turning to look at Alex. "What if changing things makes stuff worse?" they wondered. "I just hate that. Things are already bad enough out there as they are."
"Look," Alex offered, putting one arm around David's shoulder and leaning against them. "I hate to break it to you... but the world is already pretty bad in general and worse for us specifically," he offered, green eyes looking into David's. "I make the farm equivalent of minimum wage. Your last job at the game store purposely paid you one nickel more than min just so they could say they paid you 'more than minimum wage'."
Alex went on: "Scientists think we're gunna have one of the worst hurricane seasons ever. The idiot in the white house is dismantling the postal service because he wants to make it so mail-in ballots are harder or impossible to vote with and he's doing that amid a worldwide pandemic in which a ton of people have died... over 170,000 here in America so far," he stated swiftly, but simply.
David took a long breath. "So... fuck the real world? We need escapism? Do fantasy?"
"Let me put it to you this way," Alex offered. "You're a good person. So am I. Or, at least, we think we are. We care about people and have empathy for others... and none of that describes our government or the assholes in charge of it... or the oligarchy in charge of them," he said, leaning a little harder into David. "None of those people care about the rest of us like we care about us and our friends, family, community, or the world at large."
"What I'm saying—" Alex repeated, coming to a close on their initial thoughts, "—is that I'd much rather have your world-changing phone app with you and slash or I in charge of it be doing things for ourselves and others," Alex explained. "I mean, you're smarter than Trump—"
"Almost everyone is," David pointed out.
"OK, low-bar, that's fair," Alex said with a chuckle. "But, like, how did you find out this app worked. What was the first thing you tried?" And it was at that moment David gave the brief story of the old man, Charles, at the bus stop and how he was following the tutorial that changed his age... but then David changed it back, because who knew what other effects that would have had on the world and other people's lives.
Alex loosened the arm around David's shoulder, dropping his hand which'd been hardened from so much farm work. "Empathy, dude," Alex nodded. "You were worried about all the dominos... just like you freaked when you'd changed an integral part of me, my favorite color," he offered with a smile. "But, like... fuck it, you know? If you're striving to make the world a better place, then let's make some omelettes, you know? Crack a few eggs."
David took a breath. They'd already resigned themselves to their action, but there was one final thing they thought they should say to Alex. Brown eyes meeting green, David just asked: "You know what they say the road to hell is paved with, right?"
"Good intentions?" Alex asked, but asked with a tone of disbelief. There was a distinct silence for a moment before Alex responded a different way: "You know that telling people they'll go to hell for trying to do good is just one way the powerful people in the world try to discourage anyone from trying to stop them, yeah?" asked Alex. "'Don't try to stop us from doing bad things or else you might somehow make things worse', right? It's a threat to those people without power who would have power if they banded together."
David blinked. They considered those words.
"Do good until you can't," Alex insisted. "Power doesn't corrupt on its own. Power corrupts when you lose connection with people... when you lose empathy for others." Alex shrugged, then moved to sit on the arm rest of the sofa. "Studies show... rich people lose empathy for the poor after their needs have been met and they've more money than they know what to do with," he said. "Sure, you could argue its the money or the power that comes with it... but I say it's the lack of empathy for other people, which is merely facilitated by the money and power."
"OK, OK!" David said, throwing up their arms finally. "I get it. I get it," they insisted. "Let's make me a centaur, then," they offered.
"Is that your final answer?" Alex smirked.
David nodded. "Yeah," they said. "You know horses... You've got a job that's looking to hire. It's still mostly human in thought, as far as we know... and it feels like sort of a safe pick, right? Pretty human for being a supernatural," they said. "We can use it to gauge how the world would alter."
"Are you a lone centaur? Is your family also centaurs? Does it make everyone ultimately aware of magic when they weren't mere seconds ago?" he asked.
"Yeah," David said, looking at their phone's screen. "All of that."
And with that, David opened up the application, refreshed until they had 'David is an empathetic person who desires to help others,' as the sentence. And, in truth, there was something comforting about the '100% accurate statement' there on screen before them. Smiling softly to themselves, David changed the word person to the word centaur and prepared to hit Submit.
"Alright. Stand back," they said. "This'll poof transform me... so this might be big. Let's see what I end up looking like..." And with that, Alex merely leaned back on the armrest of the couch, and watched as David tapped Submit on their phone.