Just barely could she recall having at one time a younger brother. But it was all as if it was a dream. If she focused on it, it came into focus, unlike what it seemed, becoming more of a forgotten memory. If she chose to ignore it, it drifted to the back of her consciousness, like the dream it felt like it had been, yet also like something unremembered that needed to be put to name. Thinking about this as she headed for her room, Sally sat down at her desk and booted up her MacBook.
Unlike her former brother, former master, Sally thought it was better to have a decent computer, and so when she'd made alterations to their profiles, she'd set it so that her brother, when he'd still been so, had settled for a PC, whilst she was happy with a Mac. Listening to the start-up notes, she waited until she'd entered her password and brought up her desktop before she opened one of the drawers and took out an external CD-rom drive. Plugging the USB A end into a Thunderbolt converter, she slid the C end into the side of the MacBook and waited until the drive ceased humming and whirring. Reaching for the Chronivac the disk, she put it into the external CD drive, took out from the drawer another Thunderbolt converter and plugged in the portable emitter.
Screens flashed, and in less time it took for the programme to install on a PC, Sally found herself looking at the Chronivac main screen. Going through the options available, certain she'd have to re-scan herself, she was surprised to find both her and Jeff's profile had been saved. Glancing at the emitter, she wondered if maybe it had somehow saved and transferred them. Clicking on her former master-turned-brother-turned-otter’s profile, Sally expected to find herself looking at his base profile, but was taken aback to find instead it was the one she'd modified.
Curious about something, she scanned through it until she reached a read-out of percentiles. Seeing it was still set at ninety-five percent female river otter, five percent human, she mulled over what would happen if she switched it to a hundred percent otter sow, zero percent human.
"Would it even effect her?" Sally asked herself as she glanced at the emitter and wondered how for the range on it went.
A shake of her head, and she decided not to try it. Figuring better to leave things the way they were instead of taking the chance of giving Jeff back any of his humanity, she closed the profile, and about to turn to her profile when she had a thought. Hovering the mouse over Jeff's profile, she right-clicked and told it to delete. A warning flashed on the screen, but she ignored it as she confirmed the choice. The profile disappearing, she went through the Chronivac and cleared out anything she could find about her former master, former brother. Unplugging and closing things afterward, she waited a thirty-seconds before she plugged things back in, ran the Chronivac programme, and searched for anything to prove the other profile still existed.
Not finding anything, but still leery it had actually been fully erased, Sally turned her attention her profile. Oblivious to the deeper programming of the Chronivac that backed up and locked a duplicate of all profiles removed, just in case of power surges and accidental deletions and other issues, the young woman opened her profile and sat back.
Unsure what she should do next, she sat back and thought. On one had, she considered maybe finding some of her four-legged friends and making them human. The one thing that was stopping her was a fear they might do to her the same thing she'd done to Jeff. Concerned this might be what’d happen, she thought about other thing she considered, which was to regress her age. She'd spent two or three years of her life as a dog, she really wasn't sure which, and when she'd become human, it was a twenty-four year old woman. Wanting to remain the way she was, Sally wanted the whole experience, including growing up, going from a girl child to a teenage girl to the woman she was now. The one thing stopping her was something she hadn't expected, which was insecurities about her own body.
"If I regress myself back, will I grow up to be the person I am now, looking and thinking the way I am, all with the same memories? Or will I become someone else?” Sally asked herself.
Decisive suddenly in what she needed to do, she started to enter commands and pull up screens of information. Thinking over what she was doing, she decided that if she did grow up human, she'd make a few changes to herself. Shrinking her final breast size down a cup size from C to B, she altered her ultimate height and weight to something appropriate for someone five foot even. From there, she gave herself a permanent youthful look that, even at the age of seventy, when she'd start to get white hair, if she dyed it, she'd still appear to have the same look as she did when she was fifteen, sixteen. Satisfied with this, she gave herself no body hair except for very thin eyebrows and the hair atop her head, which she set at a length of just past the shoulders. After doing this, she gave herself an intelligence of a hundred and forty-nine, and made it so she'd get a Bachelor and Master's degree. Ready to save, she changed her mind and sat back in the desk chair as she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
Serious thought given to what she'd entered, Sally weighed all the pros and cons she was able to come up with. Deciding after some time she was certain, she saved the profile under the heading of her future self. Turning back to her current profile, she started to manipulate it, decreasing her age to six, believing this to be a good age to start with, making herself girly, but not overly so, as she gave herself some tomboy tendencies, changed her name to Samantha Christine, made it so she was close to both her mother and father, that she was an only child, and would always be, set it so the Chronivac was still hers, and finishing with a handful of other things, she saved the new profile and merged it with the future one. Finding it satisfying how certain aspects of her life were already planned out, and happy with them, she set everything to permanent, made only herself aware, and was about to hit execute when she faltered. Looking over everything she'd created, Sally wasn't sure what, but there seemed to be something missing from her new profile.
Everything about what she'd typed up seemed perfect, finished, yet, Sally couldn't shake the feeling she'd missed something. Going back over everything, then doing so again, she huffed, "What have I missed?"
Not able to answer her own question, she re-read all she'd inputted. Seeing everything looked good, she still was unable to tap the option to execute the initiate the new change. Fiddling with the option how long the transformation would be, and who'd be aware, she extended the time it'd take from five minutes to three years, back to five, left it so, switched back and forth whether only she'd be aware or if everyone was, or no one, and finally left it with only her aware until she'd eventually forget, like it was all some dream. Thinking over her current life as she did, it suddenly came to her that she'd not left in anything that connected her to who she'd once been. Wondering if she should, Sally pulled up some screens and after some deliberation, altered her ovum to pure canine, her menstrual cycle, when it kicked in at age thirteen and about three-quarters, that it'd also be canine, with her body going into a heat cycle every five to seven months, but only twice a year, and that it'd take until she was about seventeen or eighteen before she grew accustomed to this biological feature that'd be with her for all her life. Feeling like this answered her question of what was off, she changed one final thing, which was her language, and after making it so that she was able to understand canine, but not speak it, as well as speak, read, and understand fluently English, French, German, Spanish, Latin, Japanese, and Navajo, Sally saved her new profile.
A sigh and now satisfied, she hovered the mouse over the option to execute the change, and with a decisive, "You're doing the right thing," she clicked it, and immediately doubled over.
Head just barely missing the desk as she did so, Sally started to breath heavily as a squeezing sensation pressed on the soles of her feet and the top of her head. Gasping as her height dropped down to three foot three, she squeezed her eyes shut as the discomfort grew, missing as her chest flattened out, her waist lost the hourglass shape, and her hips, butt and thighs lost their distinct features gained through puberty. Weight dropping fast down to thirty-six point four pounds, Sally stumbled up and away from the desk as her body regained some of the baby fat it had already started to lose as she became a six year old girl. Eyes still shut type as she struggled to keep from passing out, she didn't see it as the room around her went from one of a young woman to that of a girl. As a mixed theme of dinosaurs, Hello Kitty, Transformers, Space Explorers, Dora, and My Little Pony appeared, her clothes changed so that she was wearing a pair of floral printed panties, a loose white dress that came down past her knees and had very short sleeves, and socks that barely came up past the ankles. New memories the last thing to change about her as the world outside her bedroom altered so that it matched what the changes that had taken place in the bedroom, cementing in place her mom and dad had a daughter named Samantha Christine, with the final thing to change was that her aunt, who worked from home, appeared in the office down the hall, working on a project as she believed her niece played quietly in her bedroom.
The final bit of the transformation finished, with a click of a plastic striking a wood service, Samantha opened her eyes. Looking at her room, down at herself, then at the Chronivac disk and emitter, she smiled. Liking what she saw, she started to prance about the room, taking everything in that she could see and find. Picking up a plush pony, she hugged it close and danced over to the table that had at one time been her desk. Picking up the disk, she tried to read the words printed on. And though she was intelligent for her age, Samantha was able to make out only a few of the words. Losing interest in it like the child she'd become, she scooped up the things, thought about what to do with them, and not understanding the box was meant for donations, she skipped out of her room and dumped the stuff into a cardboard box mommy had left in the dining room and had started to fill with clothes and books and flatware and utensils and other things Hugging her plush, Samantha thought about the game of pretend she'd been playing, where she’d been older and had a brother and he’d been turned into something, failing to grasp as she did that it had been real, she decided she was hungry. Heading to where her aunt was working, she waited until she had the woman's attention before she announced how she felt and inquired when lunch was in the blunt way children did when they wanted something.