His stomach growled profusely, and finally Mick acknowledged he needed to eat. With an irritated sigh, he turned to his second monitor, which showed his chat program on which he was in a group call with his guild. "Hey guys, I gotta go eat. I'll be back later," he said.
His guildmates bade him farewell as he logged out of his game and exited the call. Mick stretched his arms up and back, groaning as his muscles protested at being forced to move from the position he had been in for the past several hours.
Mick stepped out of his room and visited the bathroom briefly, all the while thinking on what to eat. He was surprised to see the main room dark, as he could have sworn he heard Todd arrive earlier. Had he missed him leaving? Maybe; he had been rather engrossed in his game, after all.
Todd was an odd character, at least from what he had gathered in their limited interactions. Since Mick spent his free time in his room, he usually usually only encountered Todd in passing when he ventured out for food or for work. Todd was friendly enough, but he was sort of a control freak; everything had to be his way. And for all his pleasantness, he had a temper when things didn't. Being that he was in some odd program at the university dealing with - as far as Mick could tell - experimental biotech, things not going Todd's way was a regular occurrence. He at least had the good sense not to break things when he got upset.
Stepping out of the bathroom, Mick paused as he walked into the living room and found it not as empty as he had thought. Todd was there, asleep on the couch, but with him was a woman. Mick raised his eyebrows; Todd had never mentioned what sort of relationships he was involved with and had never brought anyone back to the apartment, so he had just assumed Todd was single. He shrugged to himself and under his breath muttered, "Huh, okay."
Mick went into the kitchen as quietly as he could and only turned on the light over the oven, rather than the main light. He opened and closed the refrigerator door and various cabinets slowly so that they didn't make any noise. He considered his options, wondering if he wanted something heated enough to risk the microwave waking Todd or the girl up. Finally, figuring that having to say hello to Todd or the girl really was not the worst thing to endure, he threw a microwaveable pizza in and started prepping some snack items to go on the side.
He stopped the microwave at one second left to stop it from beeping at him, retrieved his food, and put everything together to take back to his room.
It was on his way back to his room, his eyes having had time to adjust to the dimness, that something caught his eye. It did not register right away, and it was not until he was passing behind the girl that he stopped.
Six hands.
There were two people in the couch, but he had seen six hands. Mick blinked; that had to have been a trick of his eyes, right? He almost ignored it, continuing back to his room and depositing his food on his desk. But before he sat, he looked back at his door as curiosity got the better of him. He crept out and looked at the sleeping couple, and this time he saw it: the girl had four arms.
She looked worse for wear, as well. Her shirt and pants were tattered, the shirt itself barely maintaining her decency and having been deliberately cut to make way for the extra arms, and her hair was a bit disheveled.
"What the hell?" he muttered, his eyes significantly narrowing.
He noted the way the girl was leaned up against Todd and that he had an arm wrapped around her. Despite her haggard appearance, she looked at ease, so if nothing else she seemed to be okay with him and not in any immediate distress. Was it a really convincing costume, then? Or maybe they were a prosthesis from Todd's experimental tech program and her clothes were simply a fashion sense. Ripped clothes had been all the rage a couple years ago, after all, so maybe this girl had just really liked such a style. It had to be something like that, because obviously there was no way a woman would have four arms.
He once again almost dismissed it as something like that and turned to go back to his room. But curiosity stopped him once more and a thought crossed his mind: there was one way to be sure. Costume or prosthesis, those extra arms would have no sense of feeling. He was curious to know which it was as well - and though he would not acknowledge it, he also wanted to be sure they weren't actually extra arms - and so decided a couple quick prods would not hurt.
Mick came up behind the woman and leaned over the back of the couch, poking a finger gently into the bicep of her second right arm. His eyes widened as, not only did the arm feel fleshy and warm under his touch, but the girl groaned in her sleep and pulled away from the touch, the second arm pulling in tighter to her body. Mick felt a brief moment of panic as he wondered if he had accidentally touched her first arm. But no, he was sure of it: that was the lower arm. Then, was the upper arm the fake one? He hesitated this time to check; if the upper arms were the fakes, then their shoulders were stunningly well designed to look natural. And the upper arms were the ones in the shirt's regular sleeves. There was no way they were fake. But then if the upper arms were not fake and the lower arms were not fake...
How did this woman have four arms?
Or four breasts, for that matter? Because as his eyes swept over the woman and took in her appearance, he could make out the definite shape of an extra set of breasts beneath her original set. What was going on?
Mick sidestepped so that he was behind Todd. He reached forward to tap his shoulder, hoping to gently wake him. But an inch away from prodding his roommate, Mick stopped. Something large and rectangular was protruding from Todd's side pocket, having come loose and almost completely fallen out while he slept. At first glance, it was a simple remote, but Mick saw there was more to it than that. For one thing, it had an LED display, and for another its body seemed almost cobbled together. The front and back, though matching up, were different colors and were held together by unpainted metal braces. The more he looked at it, the less it looked like a remote and more like an old science-fiction film movie prop.
Curiosity now having firmly taken hold, Mick reached down to the device and gently fished it out of Todd's pocket. Once sure the motion had not awoken his roommate, Mick stepped back into his room and shut the door, turning the doorknob to keep it from audibly clicking shut.
Once in the well-lit room and free of the worry of being spotted, Mick looked the device over. The display, about the size of a small, old phone's - which if the device was as kludged together as it appeared, could very likely be what it was from - lit up as he looked at it, and on it was immediately the explanation, or one of sorts: the device was set to a duplication function, and specifically was set to target breasts.
Mick stared in disbelief. It was not possible, was it? That a device that could fit in his hand do to someone what he had seen on that woman? He did not know what sort of experimental tech Todd worked on, but that was scientific impossibility, wasn't it? There was no way...
But there was a way to be sure. If the device worked and this wasn't some elaborate prank - a possibility that made just as little sense - then he could use it on himself. If what he had seen on the woman was real, then it worked and he did not need to worry about using untested tech. If none of it was real and the fake arms and breasts had been very convincing fakes of some sort, then the device would do nothing.
Mick looked over the buttons on the device. Everything was labelled, including the large red button with "ACTIVATE" printed on it; as long as he did not touch that, nothing would happen. Once sure of what everything did, Mick navigated backwards through the menu, taking it to its root. There, it simply read "Form Modifcation Remote v3.672" and "Press Menu To Begin."
"Holy shit, this is real," Mick muttered.
Well, if it was real, then he knew what he wanted to start with, and it took him little time to find it.
Being a video game shut-in who worked an office job meant Mick was not one for exercise. He was not obese, thanks to a high metabolism, but he was certainly not fit. But once upon a time he had been involved with track, during which time he had been lithe and lean. It was a shape he missed, but not enough to put himself through the hellish rigor of daily running. But if this remote did what he thought it could, then he now had a shortcut to getting it all back
He navigated the options for quite some time, pausing occasionally to listen in to the main room for any sign Todd or the woman had awoken. Finally, after double-checking the available options and that everything was set, he turned the remote on himself. With one last steeling breath, he pressed the activation button.
A warmth spread through his body, concentrated in particular on his gut and legs but also noticeable in his chest and arms. His breathing quickened as he looked down, his eyes widening as he watched in stunned amazement as his stomach and chest begin to flatten while his calves toned and hardened. His arms tightened, not becoming muscular but still losing their noticeable fat. Energy seemed to course through him as he regained the fitness of his youth, and when finally his legs had taken on an almost sculpted quality, the sensations ended.
Mick hurried to the sliding mirror door of his closet and looked at himself. Where his gut had previously begun to bulge out at the sides, his shirt now hung loose. He had to grab the belt of his pants to keep it from dropping, the transformation having taken several inches off his waist. He held up a leg and pulled the sleeve of his shorts up to admire it, barely able to believe what he was seeing.
It had worked. The device, somehow, had worked!
Staring at it, countless thoughts ran through his mind of how he could fix his body up, some useful and some purely for personal enjoyment. But one question in particular floated up above it all, and it made his smile falter.