Jeff panicked, knowing he couldn't get his mom into trouble at work. On the one hand, the easiest path would be doing nothing, knowing he would be held responsible for anything that happened to her at work, but he also knew that she might get in trouble for letting the team down. It sounded like this was an important meeting. And on the other hand, he thought maybe he could just wing it. "Sure, I can do it," he said.
"Amazing," said Chuck. "This will go great. And I promise, we'll even set up your return flight back to the resort too. You'll be back there by tonight, it'll be like you never left."
Jeff didn't care about the flights that his mom was never going to take. He was more concerned with the next day. He wound up not being able to sleep well at all, wondering if his playing around with the Chronivac had really screwed things up. He still liked sleeping in his parents' bed, in his mom's body, but tonight it wasn't that much fun to be so distracted.
He got up early the next morning when he realized that looking the part meant more than picking some of his mom's work clothes out of the closet. How was he going to put on makeup? He had no idea what went into any of it, and all he knew was there were so many different kinds of makeup women used. He went into his parents' bathroom and found his mom's makeup on a couple of shelves in the medicine cabinet, but that just made him more nervous. How was he supposed to manage all this?
With no better options, Jeff took out his mom's iPad, opened up YouTube, and started watching makeup videos. He was worried there would be nothing to help him, but after watching a couple 20-minute videos, he realized that overall, it wasn't that complicated. Feeling more confident, he undressed and took a nice, long, hot shower, playing around with his mom's body for as long as he wanted. Once he was finished and dried off, he went to his mom's dresser and found a solid, beige bra, knowing he didn't want his bra to draw any attention during a big business meeting, and a pair of lacy black panties, for the fun of secretly knowing he was wearing something naughty when he got to the corporate boardroom. He then took all of his mom's makeup out of the medicine cabinet and set it down on the bathroom sink.
Jeff then looked in the mirror. Even after a few days of this, it was still surreal to see his own mother's face staring back at him, especially now, with the reflection showing an upper body with nothing on but a bra. He exhaled and started one of the YouTube videos again, pausing repeatedly so he could follow along with his own, well, his mom's own products. By the time he was done about an hour later, he actually thought he looked pretty good, certainly better than when he started.
He went out of the bathroom and went to his mom's closet, where he looked at everything she had on the clothes hangers. He had never really paid much attention to his mom's outfits, especially when she was going to work. He remembered her outfits as being drab, but that was about it. After rifling through everything to find the option that would draw the least amount of attention, he picked out a black skirt, a shiny but loose-fitting white top, and a black jacket. Once he put everything on, he actually looked relatively professional. He found a necklace in his mom's jewelry collection that looked like it more or less went with the outfit, and he picked one of the four or five pairs of black shoes in there based mostly on it having the shortest heel. Jeff had heard about the difficulties of wearing high heels, and that was a lesson he did not need to learn today. All in all, he was impressed with how well he had been able to imitate a modern working woman. Jeff made himself a late breakfast and then got in the car to drive to his mom's office.
Jeff arrived with about half an hour to spare before the meeting. He didn't recognize any of his mom's coworkers, of course, but he said hello back to everyone who said hello to him, and fortunately this Chuck guy was waiting for him in reception. Jeff made up details about all the fun things he was doing on vacation, and Chuck discussed the details of the upcoming pitch meeting to Maximar. Jeff tried to pay attention, but it was hard to follow what was even happening.
Before he knew it, Chuck had ushered Jeff into a conference room with eight to ten people in business attire sitting around a table. Here goes nothing, he thought.