When Ethan Corcoran was woken up by the sound of a package being dropped off on the front door of his house, he grumbled - assuming as he did that it was some new item he needed to use for his job. He'd been fortunate enough to work early on for a tech company, which had ended up one of the successful examples now thriving in Silicon Valley. But the one thing he didn't much care for was the schedule. Even on his days off, he would get messages and items related to his job sent to his residence - a one story home that currently functioned as his bachelor pad. It contained a computer room, a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a shower room - all he needed. No reason to invest in one of those two story goliaths.
Grumbling, Ethan pulled himself out of bed and started toward his door - which rested just past the living room. He didn't see much reason to get dressed of yet. Ethan lived alone, and was content to enjoy both fitness and his nerdier pursuits without committing one way or another yet to a romantic partner. Granted, some of the ladies he ran into on the town were very fine indeed, but as far as he was concerned, he was too young to commit.
As Ethan walked past a mirror in the kitchen, he paused for a moment. Looking into the mirror he saw his naked form - his bushy mop of a hairdo, his ginger hair hanging down near his eyes in a few chaotic bangs. While his features seemed boyish and nerdy, replete with freckles, his body told another story. Despite his rather high voice, and proclivity for all things to do with games, comics and so on, the unassuming looking Ethan Corcoran managed a body that a number of his former girlfriends described as "studly". Sure, Ethan was not exactly a bodybuilder...
But he was reasonably proud of the lean, tightly muscled form he strutted around his house in. Biting his lip lightly and giving a coy smile at his reflection, Ethan preened and posed for his mirror, examining his body. "A sound mind, dare I say it a genius mind, deserves a sound, well muscled body." He ran a hand down his six pack abs, tracing over each abdominal development. When his hand reached down to his masculine endowment, Ethan grinned.
This was a manhood that had brought the young computing genius a lot of pleasure over the course of his adult life.
None of his former girlfriends had anything negative to say about his prowess - or indeed, how he used it. Sure he wasn't exactly a pornstar in terms of proportions, but he used what he had well enough. "Well, enough flattering my ego..." Ethan shook his head as he smiled, running a hand through his hair, "Let's see what the men in the office wanna send me today. I'll bet the latest trend item gets discarded in...a month's time? Doubt Jerry has the mind for sticking with something like this."
Jerry Malcolm was his immediate supervisor - though Ethan didn't exactly defer to him very often. Whereas Ethan attained his position through effort and intelligence, Jerry got there due to being a corporate man - more involved in the brass tacks and monetary details than the actual computer skills that were involved in the job. Standing at six foot three inches tall, the slicked back blond haired Jerry usually threw his weight and power around the office. He didn't cross the line into actual work place bullying - he was too attached to his job for that - but he went as far as he could. Whereas Ethan was svelte, thin but lean, Jerry was brawny, stocky and built like a linebacker, muscular pecs resting on Jerry's gut, earned from a lot of parties and drinking.
Wrapping a bathrobe around himself, so that he wouldn't be seen to be flashing anybody when he went to fetch whatever this latest piece of tech was, Ethan opened the door, stepped outside, and quickly brought the package indoors. Ignoring the sight of Elizabeth Colme, the next door neighbor - though he always knew she both crushed on him - and knew he had that habit of strutting around his place naked. She'd try and get a look at him, and he'd play ball. One of these days, the slightly older woman was gonna muster up the courage to approach him for some fun times late at night.
And he'd happily enjoy the occasion, he thought as he locked the door behind him, letting the robe fall on the ground behind him as he walked back to a table in the living room.
For now, Ethan figured he needed to check what this was.
Crossing one leg over the other as Ethan leaned forward, wrenching the box open, he tilted his head when he saw it. Some kind of flashdrive of some kind - marked "Chronivac Software". He read through a piece of paper included, and his eyes widened as he did so. His thoughts being that this was either some sort of elaborate prank, or he'd gotten the most immersive photo editor he'd ever seen. Because the piece of paper seemed adamant that this was in fact some sort of form of editing software contained on the flashdrive that could...could edit people. Edit things. Edit the world, even.
That kind of power was the kind of things reserved for episodic scifi television narrated by a man in a nice suit.
But looking at it, seeing this thing in front of him, he figured that he could at least try it out. He didn't use his work laptop, that would be stupid - if this was a prank, he wanted to minimize the damage. He retrieved what he called "The Porn-o-tron 9000" - a computer he often used for his more...erotically themed pursuits. Whenever he didn't have a date to whittle away the nightly hours with, he would spend his time looking at pornography on this computer in particular.
As he hooked up the Chronivac to his computer, he gasped when the screen seemed to go black for a moment...and then lit up with blue squares with silvery outlines. He leaned back in his seat, wanting to see what happened further before he tried to do anything drastic. The Chronivac seemed to be loading - and as it did, he saw it slowly constructing what looked like a 3d model of some kind of human construct within the software.
[Welcome to Chronivac. How may we change things today?] He'd never heard his CPU make that kind of vocalization before. In fact, the vaguely feminine voice that emitted as part of the Chronivac software was nothing like anything he'd heard before. It was cybernetic obviously, but there was something...off about it.
Then he saw what it was constructing.
The Chronivac had created a fully 3D rendered model of Ethan Corcoran himself. Nude as he was now. All accurate down to his scar on his left shoulder from an accident when he was ten. Lean, reasonably tall, red haired, blue eyed. He was represented in all accuracy on the computer screen. His initial thought was that somehow the machine had hacked into his CPU's camera feature and scanned him that way. He was after all sitting in his birthday suit right in front of it.
But he hadn't seen any indication. The camera was off. It wasn't even in use. Yet he could tell that somehow the device had constructed an incredibly detailed model of himself in its software. The coding on this must be something else if it can do all that... He'd need to figure that out later though. His mind was reeling - and he wanted to figure out for now what else it could do.
Could it really...?
He shook his head, "Don't be silly, Ethan," he chided himself, "It can't change people. Like, really change people. It's...it's probably just a photo editing service. A-A really...really advanced photo editing service..." But he was increasingly thinking about it. Wondering, his curiosity burning in the front of his mind as he tried to ration out what was going on. He wanted to see for himself if it was real. If it actually could change him - or someone else - or do something big.
"I mean..." He shrugged as he started looking at his data, "I'm just doing my due diligence here..." he didn't know who he was talking to, "I'll just see what it can do. Start with something uh, pretty small. Something that'll be easy to see if true. I gotta see for myself..." Ethan started clicking, increasingly intrigued as he realized this program somehow knew about everything in his life - from his birthday, to his bodyfat ratio, to his first lover, to his routines going back years... it knew when he started going to the gym! It knew when he started puberty!
"What the hell are you...?" Ethan said as he leaned forward, starting to become invested.
He figured there was something easy to start with. "Alright, let's see. I won't go the whole nine miles. And definitely not changing reality. Lets see...there's a one time change, a triggered change - where the change recurs every time something happens, a long term change, and some interesting---mhmm..."
Ethan decided to use the triggered change for now to get his feel for the transformation as alleged by the program. "Alright. Let's try this." He input a trigger - every time he did a push up, he would grow one year older. See how that felt, and whether it would just affect the Ethan he saw in the computer display, and whether he'd actually see it happen. Thankfully just in case this thing actually could do what it promised, there was an option to revert all changes at any time.
That actually had him pretty relieved. He could try this out as much as he wanted. So...