Julian stepped out of the Magic Store, and took a few steps into the Jitterbug coffee shop next door. The shop’s spacious layout, with mis-matched tables and chairs purchased from various thrift stores, stuffed animals and model ships and planes on shelves, combined with a bookshelf in the corner loaded up with a disorganized mix of fiction and history gave the place a homey feel to Juilan. He powered his newest find on while he waited for the short line to finish up. He liked what he saw. Sure, this “Reality Writer Pro” was definitely out of date tech, and there were no doubt more advanced word processor programs available for free on smartphones if he really wanted to write on the go, but he liked the tactile feel of actual keys as he typed, and it was easier to carry around than most laptops.
Plus, he couldn’t exactly argue with a price as low as “free” could he? Ordinarily Julian would have been a little more skeptical of an offer like that, but he’d known the Magic Store’s owner, Durand York since he’d been eight. Even after Julian’s childhood interest in stage magic faded, he’d kept coming back to the store to browse through the strange curios Mr. York regularly brought to the shelves, and had gradually become well acquainted with the old man. Julian figured it had probably just been a gift for being such a loyal customer for so long.
“Next in line- Oh, hey Julian,” came a friendly female voice from behind the counter. “Should I get you the usual?”
Looking up, Julian saw Jessica manning the register. The short, dark-haired young woman had shared several general education classes in college last semester, and had studied together, but her working here over the summer had given the two a bit of time to talk and get to know each other during the slower days.
“That plus a BLT, I’ve got a little extra cash today.” He slid a couple bills onto the counter.
“Nice, looks like the manager’s not gonna complain about you loitering here all day after buying just one cuppa joe tonight.” She grinned. “‘Course, you didn’t hear that from me. Take a seat and I’ll get it to you soon.”
Julian did as she said, and took out the device again. As the screen lit up, a spinning hourglass appeared next to the words “Connecting to Aethernet...” on a plain, dull green background, which quickly changed to “Connected!” before swapping to the layout of a typical word processor, if a little sparse on some of the modern formatting options. Seemingly in their place, were options to view and post on various writing focused sites, quite a few he recognized, and a few he did not, and a “friends list,” which currently had a notification icon.
‘Already?’ Julius thought. “I haven’t even signed onto anything.”
Clicking it, he saw the friend invite was from Mr. York. He chuckled, and accepted it figuring the old man must have just preset this stuff before giving it to him.
‘Now, what kind of story to break this device in with?’ He thought to himself. ‘Ah, Phil’s little ‘totally not a self-insert’ commission, of course. I wonder if The Change Archive is on that list of sites this thing can connect to. That’ll save some time.”
It was a cruel, impossible choice. How could anyone be so heartless as to make a mere mortal pick between one or the other?
“Again, sir, do you want chocolate or vanilla?” The clerk behind the counter at the ice cream shop said, doing his absolute best to hide a sigh. (His best, incidentally, was not all that great.)
Stephan had a difficult time making choices. From what to eat to what he looked for in a date, he could never quite decide what he really wanted. And whenever he DID choose, he almost always regretted it.
Stephan clenched his teeth. He couldn’t do it! Not under pressure like this!
"Sir," the man groaned, "the line is building up, could you please make your order?"
Stephan looked behind him, at the growing crowd tapping their feet, looking at their watches or phones, or glaring at him impatiently.
"S-sorry!" He screeched, throwing a handful of one dollar bills onto the counter, and running to the shop’s exit. "Just take the money and get me whatever you recommend!"
"But sir, I-" the man was interrupted by the jingling of the shop’s door bell. "I'm not allowed to leave the register during my shift…"
Julian ran around the corner of the building, out of sight of the big glass windows and the periodic car passing on the street. He would’ve had trouble believing how he’d just acted if he hadn’t had a bad habit of this already.
Another man, dressed in a white coat (quite unusual for a hot summer day) stepped out of the building, and toward Stephan.
“Hello there,” the man said, “I couldn’t help but notice your… difficulties…”
“Oh, sorry.” Stephan stepped back, fidgeting. “Yeah, it’s kinda hard not to notice.”
“What if I told you I can help you with your choice anxiety?” The man held up a business card. “I’m a doctor that specializes in dealing with this sort of thing. Would you be interested?”
Stephan froze. Would he be interested? This was all so sudden, he couldn’t make a decision right here.
“And while you’re dealing with the choice paralysis...” The man in the white coat suddenly stretched out his other hand, and grabbed Stephan’s, producing a slight prickling sensation, followed by a numbness that spread from his arm rapidly to the rest of his body.
“I’ll give you some actual paralysis.” were the last words Stephan heard before he lost consciousness.
When he came too, he found himself strapped down to a table, in a cold, sterile metal room. He tried to cry out, but he was gagged, and he couldn’t turn his head enough to see anything beyond a set of strange, thin, curled metal devices hanging from the ceiling above him like outstretched claws.
Julian paused. Was he perhaps moving just a little too fast?
Nah. He shrugged. He knew what his audience came to him for, and it wasn’t subtlety.
“Ah, I see you’re awake,” came the familiar voice of the man with the white coat over an intercom. Stephan looked around, but couldn’t see anyone. “Guess I underestimated the amount of tranquilizer I’d need to administer. Oh well, better to have too little than too much, with these things. It would have been a little easier on you had you been asleep, but I believe I’ve gotten this process perfected to the point where you shouldn’t feel too much pain. The nerves will be the first things to go!”
Stephan shut his eyes as the light above him got brighter. He heard the devices above him whirring menacingly to life. Electrical sparks and creaking metal grew louder as the mechanical limbs began to jab into his skin. His screams were muffled, but after a few moments, the pain stopped, as his limbs lost all feeling. Under his skin, his nerves and veins twitched and shuddered and nanites passed through them, converting them to wires and circuit boards. Any and all hair fell away.
Stephan couldn’t see what was happening to him, couldn’t feel a thing, and worse, the world had gone dead-silent save for a dull electronic hum, and the beating of his own heart. And even that, slowly, wasn’t sounding right. He wanted to fight it, wanted to scream, but he was powerless.
His skin became firmer, smoother, hardening into steel as his body bent and twisted. Any clear indication of sex smoothed over, while his muscles were shrunk into pistons and pneumatics. His lungs flattened and split, becoming a fan cooling system, his heart grew gears as it became a motor, and his bones became solid metal. The outer surface of his eyes became glass lenses, the inner eye a complex camera. The eardrums bent into microphones, while his throat was replaced by a voice box.
Feeling had come back to him, after a fashion, but his still-changing brain didn’t quite know what to do with the foreign signals it was receiving. Stephan’s world became a haze of tasted colors, bright sounds, and tight scents.
Aesthetic touches were added next. Green paint was applied in a pattern that suggested feathers, his feet were removed and replaced with what looked like-bird talons. A long, thin, metal beak was attached to Stephan’s mouth, while his now-purely-decorative ears were removed (leaving the tiny microphones below as they were).
Stephan’s still-immobile body was released from its shackles and flipped over, and a set of large wings, and “tail feathers” were attached to holes in his shoulders and lower torso, fitting in snugly, making Stephan resemble a robotic, humanoid hummingbird.
As the changes to Stephan’s brain completed, all his senses came back into focus, if a little different from how he remembered them.
What’s more, he felt something he couldn’t remember feeling in a long time:
Clarity.
Every decision-making process had suddenly become so simple! There was a routine for every question or command asked of him, a precise order of operations to follow for every action. The countless branches for each of these routines might have daunted his human self, but his new machine form could perfectly recall each step.
What would have been an overwhelming volume of new knowledge had been uploaded into his mind, for all sorts of tasks, from housekeeping and cooking, to organization and resource management, to research protocols. Stephan couldn’t help but marvel at all the things he could do now, and that was before he even got to the fact that he now had working wings.
Stephan’s microphones picked up the voice of Dr. Hartzell, the man in the white coat that had kidnapped him and done this to him. Part of him wanted to just ignore whatever that man had to say, and what’s more to get out of this lab. But that part of him had always been indecisive before, and protocols were clear; he was to obey whatever human was registered as his owner, and at this time, it was Dr. Hartzell. He stood up, and rose to attention, listening carefully.
Were his beak attachment capable of smiling, it would have. He liked his decision-making process being so straightforward for once.
“Ah, at last, a perfect physical conversion!” Dr. Hartzell grinned wildly as he darted around Stephan like a fly, inspecting the robotic hummingbird all over. “Yes, all joints are moving correctly, your balance seems stable. We’ll need to get to the wind tunnel before we can test your flight properly, but everything looks in order. Now then, robot, state your designation.”
Stephan responded promptly. “My current ‘nickname’ is Stephan. My serial number is H-N-88349.”
“Hmm, good… Let’s get to testing, shall we? I want to see if building an AI off a saphiant biological base will pay off as I hoped.”
Stephan was put through a gauntlet of tests for his cognitive functions; his ability to read, write, understand spoken language and infer context to correctly interpret slang and figures of speech, his understanding of math and science, the ability to learn and process new information, as well as his ability to properly follow orders, all of which he passed with flying colors.
Speaking of flying, as unlikely as it might have seemed, Stephan’s new wings actually allowed him to hover as easily as he could walk (if at a higher fuel cost). Even without a single choice to call his own, breaking away from the ground for the first time filled Stephan with overpowering joy. A whole new world was open to him, and his choice anxiety would never get in the way of it.
At some point during all of that, Stephan inwardly wondered why he was built to look like a hummingbird, but his protocols made it clear that now was not the time to ask questions. Instead, he looked through the info that Dr. Hartwell had programmed into him. Turned out to be a request by the client he was to be sold to. Well, knowing that it would make his future owner happier would better serve his new function.
While some old part of him was worried what kind of person this client would be, but his new protocols ensured he’d never lack direction, ever again, and in the end that calmed him immensely. Even after being sold as a machine, his life wasn’t so bad. With the pretty penny his new owner had spent on him Stephan had no fear of mistreatment. There was always something to be done, he was always useful.
He couldn’t imagine going back.
Julian looked over what he had written. It seemed like a good enough short story. Phillip would probably say the ending was too abrupt, but he always had some issue with the endings, anyway. Perhaps a round of editing could take care of it later, if (or rather, when,) Phillip had reviewed it.
He hit the "save" icon and set the device down, thanking Jessica as she brought him his coffee and sandwich. As he was about to bite down on his meal, a noise came from the device. Picking it back up, he saw it was a notification.
"Durand York would like to see your latest work. Share your story?"
'Of course not!' Julian thought. He wasn't about to just show any real life acquaintance one of his quick fetish fics. He had more dignity than that!
He set the device back down and reached for his sandwich, when another notification sound interrupted him. He looked at the new message.
“Remember, I said it was free as long as you shared your stories with me. I might have my new assistant come to pick it back up for me, if you’ve changed your mind. Or charge you $500.”
Julian wasn’t entirely sure that was legal, but it wouldn’t be worth the hassle to resist at this point. He quickly re-titled the file “thecommissionphilpaidfor,” so Phil could hopefully take the brunt of the mockery for Julian if Mr. York thought a TF short story was weird. It probably wouldn’t work, but it’s not like Phil would suffer from one shop owner on the other side of the Atlantic knowing he’d paid for a weird short story.
After opting to “Share all stories” with Mr. York, Julian went back to his sandwich, and actually had time to finish it before getting another message, in a chat side-feature on the device.
DY: Well, it’s not the most subtle work I’ve read, maybe a bit rushed during the first meeting with the scientist, and at the end. But it’s still a decent start. Good work. I had a feeling you would be a good candidate for this and it looks like I was right.
DY: I’ve even gotten a new assistant out of it.
Julian typed a response.
JB: Thanks. I was a little surprised you’d be asking to see something of mine so soon.
JB: Hey, what do you mean “new assistant?”
JB: You’re not planning on commissioning me or something, are you?
DY: Oh, no that’d go against my company policy. I was talking about Phil. Or “Stephan,” if you prefer.
JB: Sorry, what?
DY: Maybe it’s better if I just have him meet you in person.
Looking up through the shop window, Julian saw the robotic hummingbird, as if it had stepped right out of his imagination. It- no, HE stepped through the door, garnering curious looks from a few other customers, but nothing nearly approaching the reaction a humanoid robot showing up should have on people.
“Hello, Julian,” he spoke in a calm- steady voice, not a hint of the awkward pausing or difficulty pronouncing words that typical text to speech programs produced.
“Ph-Phil? Is that you?”
“Yes, it is. Thank you for writing that commission for me, by the way. I have already transferred the payment, with a little bonus.” He paused, looking over Julian’s wide-eyed, slack-jawed face. “But I am certain you will have many questions about this. My owner, Mr. York, believes that many of them will be beyond my knowledge, and instructed me to lead him back to you, if you wish, where he will answer.”
Julian tried to stop shaking. What on earth was going on?
“Okay” He mumbled. He slowly stood up, then walked after Phil, almost more mechanically than than the robot himself, his mind reeling as he tried to grapple with what he was seeing.
When he was back in the Magic Shop, Mr. York stood behind the counter with a smile on his face.
“I wanna say that this is a big Prank,” Julian muttered. “But I can’t see how… So… would you mind telling me what the hell is going on? Did you do something to Phil?”
“Come now, Julian,” Mr. York said, “you write transformation stories. Did an old shopkeep giving you a free device called ‘Reality Writer Pro’ really not tip you off to anything?”
Julian stepped back. “I- but you… I didn’t…He was...”
Mr. York chuckled softly. “Use your words, please.”
“I didn’t write about Phil!” Julian managed to straighten up. “Everyone in that story was completely made up! Why is Phil a robot now? And more importantly, can I turn him back?”
“Every complete story written in the RWP is made true, whether retroactively in the past, as part of the present, or in the future. If the story does not feature any specific real people, it’s events will happen to one of the people the author based that character on, and failing that, the person with the closest set of traits to the character, or, failing THAT, a new person will be retroactively added to the timeline that matches better. And, before you ask, if you were to write something in a fantasy or sci-fi world, it could either bring those elements into the real world, as if they’d always been, with only you and I knowing any different, or make the closest equivalent happen, such as going to a doctor when the character went to a healer.”
He walked around the counter. “As for the question of ‘can you change him back?’ The answer is ‘yes.’ But it won’t be as easy as simply writing, Phil or Stephan ‘changed back to his old human self.’ There are many artifacts distributed by my Benefactors that work in much more straightforward ways, but the WRP requires a bit more effort. Simply writing single sentences, that you grew massively muscular all of a sudden and became a millionaire, or that a virus that enslaved all women to your will suddenly appeared in the world, don’t really make for interesting stories unless you build on them a bit.”
He patted Phil on the back. “But I think a more important question is, ‘does Phil WANT to go back to normal?’ After all, he paid for that commission to fulfill a fantasy of his. Do you want to go back to normal, Phil?”
Phil’s calm, steady demeanor halted, wings fluttering and hands fidgeting nervously as he turned to face Mr. York, his eyes filled with horror. “NO! Absolutely not!” He shook his head, and straightened back out into proper posture. “Apologies, sir, that emotional outburst was not a part of my typical protol. I’ll run a diagnostic to locate the source of the issue and ensure it does not happen again. To answer your question, if you were to, hypothetically, have the means to return me to my previous self, and ordered me to do so, I would comply. Were it left to my judgement, however, I believe I would be most efficient (and personally satisfied) if I were to remain like this for the foreseeable future.”
Julian blinked. It could have been an act, sure, but it wasn’t every day you saw someone breaking free of their mind control to beg you to let them stay under control. Still…
“I wrote that he’d enjoy it at the end, how do I know that’s what he really wanted?”
“You knew Phil better than I would have,” Mr. York pointed out. “The simple fact now is that he IS happy with his new life, whether you ‘made him’ that way or not. But, if you want to change him back, it’s not my place to stop you. As long as you can make an interesting story out of it.”
“You won’t do anything?”
“No, I gave the device to you because my Benefactors want to see some stories while they re-invigorate this stagnant world. You can use it however you want, (with the exception of using it on me, or trying to access or manipulate my Benefactors). Bring karma on those deserving it, drop cruel twists of fate into innocent lives, give the helpless a leg up… If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can even play ‘catalyst’ and try transforming every person in the world along some similar theme, but most of them fizzle out eventually if there isn’t some central conflict, relationship or other narrative threads to keep interest going. I’ve only heard of one or two worlds in that vein reaching a satisfying conclusion, much less… ahem…” He coughed, and imitated a voice that sounded more befitting a supervillain, “Complete... Global... Saturation!”
His voice returned to normal. “But that’s it for now. I leave the rest up to you to decide.”