Pa panicked as elevator music wafted from the phone. He’d been put on hold.
What the hell was the tech going to do? He had no idea how far back the tech would roll things back. When had the error occurred? That was the biggest leap. If they rolled it back enough, he’d end up a teenager again! His mind stumbled. On one hand, he knew, logically, that he shouldn’t have a problem with that. And yet emotionally he was Finn’s father and Dave’s lover and husband for almost twenty years now.
Twenty fake years, a niggling voice in his head added.
“Sir?” ‘Michael’s thickly accented voice interrupted Pa’s thoughts, “Are you still there?”
“Yes!” Pa said. “How far back are you rolling the changes?”
“That is what I wanted to talk to you about. The Chronivac is made for PC only. I detected multiple versions of the app on phones.” ‘Michael’ explained. “That is the cause for your file corruption.”
“Because it isn’t compatible?” Pa asked.
“Yes. It should have thoroughly saved all previous data but without proper memory storage you will get compounding errors. I have placed a technical hold on all other phone accounts while I work on the fix.”
“How long will that take?”
“A week.”
“My file is corrupted and I can’t control myself for much longer.” Pa explained. “Please, help me.”
“Sir…” There was a pause. “I can try rolling you back to the start of the overnight update. But the corruption will occur again tonight. There was a fatal exception in several of the profiles connected to this account. Unless we find the cause of that error, you’ll simply become corrupted again.”
“I see.” Tod swallowed thickly. “Thank you.”
“Alright, I’ve gone ahead and locked the phone accounts. I’m going to put in a request to roll you all back to pre-corruption, it should go through shortly. If you have any additional issues, please feel free to call back.” Micheal said, then ended the call.
Pa lowered the phone.
A fatal exception had occurred during the overnight update. Phone app data had become corrupted and in effect, had driven several people insane. But if that were true, why hadn’t Jeff or Mike gone insane?
He shivered as a cool wave passed through his body. All of the anger and hatred, all of the murderous rage vanished as quickly as it has appeared.
Pa sighed in relief. Thank God! Without that inner psycho inside him, urging him on, the inside of his head was finally quiet, making things as simple as thinking so easy in comparison. Then he shivered as he realized that this wouldn’t last.
The panda had until tonight to fix things.
What should he do? Clearly he didn’t want to be old again. Should he roll himself back to 18? But then again, if he did that, he’d lose Dave. And if he rolled the older ram down to 18 so they could date, who would be Finn’s father?
It was all a confusing mess. In the end, Pa realized, something would need to be sacrificed. If his teenage self was so upset with this outcome that it would destroy everyone around him, then he couldn’t make this decision himself, he needed his consent.
Consent
Pa blinked, realization hitting him like a truck.
Why was his inner self growing murderous? Because he didn’t choose to be this way. Someone else (likely Finn, now that he saw the other files) had fucked with him. Finn was likely corrupt as well. Jeff had been perfectly fine, as had Mike. They clearly intended to have these changes, or rather, the changes were agreeable to their inner selves.
Dave and Chuck’s lack of corruption would likely be for the same reason-they wanted it.
Every error, if his assumption was correct, stemmed from the lack of consent of the person being changed. They were fighting the reality shifts because they did not ask for them. The more reality shifted, the more they fought against it.
But...why was it like that? A reality shift shouldn’t involve the inner personality of the subject. That was clearly unintended. That might have been the fault of the phone apps.
But thankfully it meant one more thing: he could fix it.
All Pa would have to do was figure out what the corrupted profiles really wanted. He knew he liked being a panda and he loved Dave. But he could tell that he didn’t want to be older and fat. Not that there was anything wrong with being either, but his teenage self was clearly rebelling against it.
He tapped his chin with a paw and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. There had to be a way to weave a narrative that his old self would consent to and not upset his new self. Clearly, he wanted to be young, so back to 18. Changing Dave might be a trap, but he recalled, vaguely, that dating Dave while Mike was around would end badly.
So...Mike. No corruption despite being a fat trucker who bottomed for a warthog. His plan on sending him to live with Chris might actually work! He pulled up Chris’s old profile. He couldn’t see anything through all the artifacting, but just thinking about the warthog had given him a few ideas about what he might hate about himself. Maybe a few positive changes for him were in line to get him to go along with the transformation.
Jeff appeared to be bug-free despite being turned into a cock-hungry slut, no changes needed. Finn was rebelling against being a bottom, since that line was corrupted, so maybe make him a top and ship him off. Buck was overwritten and the changes seemed to have stuck now that he was basically a clone.
Pa smiled.
Everything was perfect now. The tech couldn’t fix things because he was concentrating on technical data and not the ephemeral. Therefore, Pa had fixed it himself.
He inputted the changes and hit enter.