"Chester T. Cheetah here. Speak and be cool."
David rolled his eyes once, holding his new and smaller phone to his ear. "Mr. Conway, how'er you this evening?" he wondered as brown eyes looked to the silver and blue Emitter in his right hand. "I'm about to do something possibly stupid and I could use a check-in if you can manage it."
"The great David Scott the Third about to do something stupid—ah... a man after my own heart! I love a stupid thing done knowingly. What's on the agenda for tonight? Going to ask Mrs. Phillips out on a date?"
The black-haired man put a finger to the right-side of his lower lip and considered that. With what he was about to do, would that even be possible? What if she freaks out? Yet, he blinked and shook the thought away, lowing his hand. David smirked. "That's only stupid if her crazy husband I've never met shows up a week later and goes second amendment on me."
"Also, she could turn you down 'cause 'age difference'."
"I mean, there is that..." David conceded, trailing off.
There was a purposeful pause to break the moment on Ches' part before he inquired directly: "So, what's the stupid idea and how can I help?"
Not once since middle school did David ever truly mistrust Chester. Yes, the man was a lot more prone to thievery and pranks in real life than David was, but he had rarely done that to David himself, usually at the start of April. So it would be quite a shock to him if revealing the Chronivac's existence to Ches was at all a bad call.
"I'm gunna level with you, fellow transformaniac... I have one of those story TF MacGuffins and I may have seen the outside of the universe a little bit ago which may be causing me to act dangerously out of character..."
You see, sometimes their group of friends would propose a made-up situation as if it were true. Things like 'last night, a zombie was banging on my door' and other prompts. Without missing a beat, the others would fall into the hypothetical and approach it logically. While Chester wasn't about to believe such a story implicitly, he was going to treat it as true... thinking it wasn't, when it actually was.
"I am intrigued by this premise, my friend. Please continue," Chester prompted.
"There's this device—" and David proceeded to explain about the Emitter and it's design, focusing extra on the Revert button. "I'm gunna use it to turn myself into a wolf-based creature... unless I fuck something up," he explained. "Or maybe... especially if I fuck something up, I'll need help." He took a breath. "If you hear of such a creature and I'm missing, please find this device and hit Revert or, barring that, change me back."
"Dude, I have class in three hours... can't you make the timer longer than twelve to revert?"
David took a breath, then looked at his phone. "Chester... I... where are you? Can I Facetime you?"
"You... want to TF yourself while I watch...?" David could almost hear Chester's mind clicking, gears slotting into place. The black-haired man had stepped over an imaginary line willingly, bringing an edge of realism to the story and essentially daring Chester to push ahead. Chester took this as a challenge and made his next question purposefully direct: "Can I record it?"
"Record it?"
"If the TF is 'coming from inside the house' then, yeah. If you're treating this like a real thing then I'm going be real with you. You ain't got nothing I haven't seen before in the locker room or Strip Wii Bowling... if you're TFing, I do wanna see it... but if we're digital already, I wanna record it." He paused, then skipped ahead to his next thought. "And if you really have such a MacGuffin, and you're already a cyber-exhibitionist, it's the last logical step before you take your TF'd body and have sex in public, yeah?"
David balked. "I was thinking of doing one of those solo scenes where you go into great detail on the one character's transformation. Sex wasn't really in the plans for this..."
"Ah. Classic TF into masterbation scene? Well, that got complicated when you put your bisexual Furry compatriot on the other end of a phone call and asked him to Facetime you. A part of you might have planned for said scene, but you've let the author get a better feel for the characters and trapped yourself in this direction as the dialog ran away from you..."
There was a long pause as David took in all of Chester's words. Chester wasn't aware of the universe like David was... not as far as he knew, anyway. This was just how they normally talked...
David glanced in my direction, then yours, then back at the phone. "You may not realize it, but you're doing that thing where the audience knows something the character speaking doesn't and so is unaware of the double-meaning behind their words." Chester started to say something, but David just plowed through, furthering the conversation. "Point being: you've made a valid criticism on one hand and simultaneously called my bluff on the other. Well played, sir."
"Give the people what they want!" Chester chuckled.
Already having moved to the basement entrance, David Scott walked down the sturdy wooden stairs which lead to a carpeted over concrete floor below. On those stairs, he passed a number of family photos, all with currently normal family pictures within them. That is to say, neither his mother, father, nor any of their brothers and sisters looked like they were drunk in any of the photos... just a big, normal, mostly white, European family. Everyone, that was, except for David's aunt Rachelle's husband and her kids who were decidedly darker but no less loved.
David walked behind an exercise bike and other equipment which was set up facing an old floor-model, wooden enclosure CRT television from the 1950's whose rabbit ears had been replaced with a modern digital converter adaptor. David Senior was a bit of an electrician in his spare time, and even had a ham radio over in his storage room next the the laundry. The basement was mostly clean, and wide, with thick pillars holding up the sizable upstairs.
Moving towards the 'guest room'—his room—David pushed open the door then shut it behind him, locking it out of habit. A moment later he glanced backwards and unlocked the door. If he needed someone to be able to get to him, he didn't need to add another step.
"I am now inside my room, about to put the camera on the arm I use for streaming... where are you?" David asked.
"I am now in my room, at my computer, away from the roommates with the door locked and the sign flipped on the outside."
David blinked. "The one that says 'Redpaw Swiftfoot Starsinger at Work, Do Not Disturb'?"
"That's the one. Jason has a tendency to barge in when he makes an accomplishment in some game and give the whole backstory to the moment like Neelix giving the history of meal. Tonight he's playing Elden Ring. But, with the sign up, he's usually deterred." There was the sound of clicking on the other end of the phone and the Facetime call swapped to Chester's iMac. "To him, Furry equals porn."
"Right."
"Do you want my camera on? I know you get camera shy, but let's be real... making yourself into your Fursona is going to make opening an OnlyFans really profitable."
"I hadn't considered that. I guess if this makes me comfortable in my own body, maybe I could..." Being genderfluid meant David was transgender sometimes, unable to be always comfortable in his own skin... unlike a regular transperson who was uncomfortable all the time. There was a weird hope in the back of his mind, then, that after this he'd feel most comfortable in his new choice of form.
Tapping a button on his phone, he turned on the forward-facing camera so Chester could see him, then slid it into the grip of the metal arm he had adjacent to his desktop. A second later, he could see Ches: a lanky guy with dark red hair and thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses. He was wearing a shirt with a cheetah's face on it, though it didn't quite make it all the way to his waist. As a result, it reveal narrow lines of spotted tattoos down his sides exactly like a Trill from Star Trek.
David sat down at his Windows 10 machine and pulled forward his USB Hub from where it was at the edge of his desk. He tried to plug the Emitter into the port but it wouldn't fit... so he flipped it around, and tried again. It didn't fit, so David looked at it to make sure it was USB and not C, which it was. Flipping it back around to the way he'd had it the first time, it slid in easily.
The Chronivac 4.23.1 appeared on screen in Windows instantly, full screened as Chester laughed. "I see your MacGuffin is really well grounded in reality... fuckin' USB."
"Except for the part where it automatically changes size and shape depending on which USB I've decided to use," David notes. Chester just lifted an eyebrow. David glanced down at his USB hub, then reached up and moved the arm holding his phone so Ches could see it as well. "Or that I don't have the power on to that port and yet it still swapped," David pointed out. See, on David's hub each USB had it's own on/off switch and light and the Chronivac was set to swap PC's by which was the last one it had been plugged into... but apparently the rules of that didn't require the port to actually be functional...
"Neat trick. I take it the blue power light just doesn't work on that port anymore?"
"Hold on, disbeliever... let's get this party started," David said confidently while turning the camera so it could view his hands, and the computer screen at the same time. He clicked on himself, then on a specific body part, and choose his lower right arm. Selecting norther timberwolf, David hit 'Change'.
Noting immediately appeared to happen and Chester smirked. "You've still got your acting skills from LARP, I see." David looked to the screen. His mouse had slid away from the on-screen button at the last moment and didn't register the click. Glancing to me accusingly, then to Chester, David once again tired to click the button. "You really had me going for a... moment..." he trailed off into whisper.
Ches' eyes were transfixed as he watched in 720p as the transformation began. Light gray fur ripple-grew downwards like water undulating beneath a rice paddy. The bones of David's elbow reshaped themselves and his muscles altered visibly beneath his skin. The fur travelled smoothly down the arm to his wrist where it seemed to bubble up as bones shifted and shrunk. His arm became more narrow and longer while his fingers plumped up and widened.
Turning his hand so that it was palm-up facing his phone, David put his changing right hand into his left hand, squeezing with his left thumb against the roughening flesh of his new paw-pad as it grew into the middle of his palm. Fur filled in around it and the pads at the end of his fingers, leaving no visible human flesh on his whole arm. His fingernails narrowed and hooked downwards off the top of his digits as they and slowly darkened, becoming hooked claws. As his thumb shifted back and became a dew-claw, the four fingers which remained became more a mirror of each other with the two central ones longer and flanked by the two slightly shorter ones. When all was said and done, his lower right arm had become half the front right leg of a wolf.
Chester let go of a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, his mind now at the realization both that David had transformed and that, one minute later, it was now over. "Holy shit, dude!" proclaimed Chester. David looked away from his hand to see his friend's eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. "Do me next!"
"I'm not done with me," David laughed. "Also, the Emitter couldn't reach you from here..."
Chester stood up, one leg going backwards over the seat of his chair he was in such a hurry. He lunged at the door and grabbed his coat from hook on its back as he declared: "I will get closer!"
"You're twenty minutes away and I'm not waiting." David paused, trying to flex is right hand and move the digits apart. They did, but clearly his short 'toe-fingers' weren't as flexible as they'd just been while human. Using his left hand, he rubbed his right's paw-pads, then squeezed the webbing between his digits. "Glad I only did the one arm," he realizes aloud as he faces the computer screen once more. Moving his left hand over the keyboard, he began typing with his still human, dominant hand.
Chester quickly sat back down in his chair to watch as David turned on the realtime changes and moved the slider of change between his old human arm and his new wolf limb back and forth slowly a few times while his friend watches. Eventually, he settles his change, where his hand seemed to have the same movement as his old human one, though with the claws were a bit wider, closer to human fingernail distance, and the addition of the webbing. He tweaked his arm more wolf-like and the general layout of his hand more human to get his thumb back in position and usable again using the Advanced options
When he was done, he moved his hand in front of the camera and wiggled his hand-paw, complete with fur pushing out from around his paw-pads. "That feels nice... what do you think?"
"I want some... but, you know, kitty?" David glanced up at Chester. "I mean, I wouldn't be mad if you made me wolfie 'cause then I'd stop being human... but I'd really rather be a cheetah-looking Chakat."
"I don't think those are an Open Species, Redpaw," David said, lifting up his left hand and interlocking it with the fingers of his right hand. He then cracking his knuckles on each just to make sure he still could. "But sure, I can probably do that... if I can figure out how to taur myself," David considered. "I wonder... I need to check about mythological creatures, maybe? I should have made sure before I started..."
"Can you copy your one hand's settings to the other?"
"I think so... I should also be able to make a Preset in case I want to make other people what I'm about to be... either fully or partially." He checked one of the screens of the Chronivac, selected his left arm, then copied the changes for his right hand onto it. For a second after it had happened, he worried if he'd have two right hands, but no... the program was smart enough to copy only the relevant changes... and soon the fur, paw-pads, webbed digits, and claws were all mirrored onto his left.
"Sweep the changes?" Chester suggested. David looked over while he touched his new paws to his face, closing his eyes as he felt the roughness of the pads with the fur there around them. His fur. "Like, you don't want to make your torso barrel out into a full wolf then make it human again, right?" Chester asked, unable to keep the jealousy from his tone. "So can you take your percentages and copy only those to the rest of your body?"
David rubbed his chin with his right hand, grinning like an idiot. His left hand was already selecting both his upper arms. "OK. To the shoulders first," he said, and hit 'Change'. The fur travelled up his arms to the shoulders, keeping the same hybrid mix of mostly human shape but animal covering. "I wonder what my bloodtype is now..."
"Schrödinger's TF... there's no right answer until it's observed."
"So my blood just works until I look at it too hard?"
Chester shrugged, having literally no idea. "Sure."
"Frightening," David remarked as he took a deep breath, applying his percentages to his whole torso. He leaned back in his chair as his shirt became tight against his new, thicker chest. Fur cascaded down his front underneath the white shirt with the black QR design on it. That waist he had narrowed a bit, and his belly flattened inward. "Oh... oh that actually felt notably weird."
"How does the transformation feel?" Chester wondered aloud.
"Oh, I just have it set to default right now... it's called 'Smooth', but there's also 'Bone Cracking', 'Pleasurable', 'Bursting', 'Bubbling', 'Flashy', and others—oh... and I saw 'Body Horror' was one. Not sure why you'd want that."
"To do to your enemies," his friend pointed out nonchalantly. "But you didn't really answer the question... what's 'smooth' feel like?"
David put his furry hands together in front of his face, considering his answer. "You ever strained a muscle so hard it hurt but could feel when it was softening again, shrinking back into place?" he asked, rhetorically. "It's like that, without the pain. Everything just sort of fills in or leaves... fat changes shape in your arm, muscles shaped differently, bones alter. It's like... I dunno... it's like how you'd imagine 'smooth'."
Chester just nodded softly, glancing at his own arm for a moment. David went on: "You can pick direction... but the default is 'random' which is what I'm doing," David said as he leaned back over the computer, looking through the settings. "Kind of concerned that my cloths didn't change with me. Let me try and find a setting for that if there is one..."
"Meanwhile, I'll pepper you with questions..." Ches smirked. "Like, where did you get this device? This seems like science-fantasy right now." David preceded to explain that he'd gotten it in the mail, from a company named TransDem. "And what was the thing where you saw the universe from outside or whatever?"
David's still human eyes turned to look into his iPhone's camera and directly at Chester. "I saw the universe for what it was... a simulation for other people's enjoyment... a computer program being run by people not totally unlike us, allowing different authors to control the events of what happens... not always in the prettiest or seamless of manners."
Chester Conway leaned back in his chair, taking that idea in. He sort of shrugged, then leaned towards the camera again. "Well... if that's true, I guess that's fine."
"Fine?"
"Well, it doesn't really change anything... like, wether you believe in an almighty god or not, the universe is still the universe. This is just one level above that." He shrugged. "We can't really do anything about it, so why worry. Our whole lives have been simulations so what's really the difference now that we know?"
"I... guess...?" David responded slowly, but honestly was still trying not to think about us.
"Furthermore!" Chester boomed, smiling. "You're an exhibitionist, so knowing there's always someone watching no matter how alone you are must be a real turn-on."
David's still human cheeks flushed a little. "I've never had sex in a public place before... I don't want to get caught. It's always been online stuff in chat rooms... and does that really count?"
"Yes," Chester responded quickly. "Also, Kendra Lamar, the science fair, 1998."
"It was a photo booth. One with a door. No one saw or heard anything... you only know because I told you. Not public."
"There were people all around the— You know what! Hugo Balenciaga, Six Flags over Atlanta, 2017."
"That wasn't sex. He gave me a blowjob on my 'perfectly average dick'... also, it was 2016."
"Oh! Are we doing this? I didn't realize we were doing this," Chester said, a bit aggressive. "Fine. Dropping the big gun for F.S.: Francisca Soares, her parent's bedroom with the thin walls, 2003. I was there at the party! 'Where's Fran' people wondered. We might not have heard the moaning at first, but whatever you were doing combined with the rocking of the bed lead to her yelling 'Oh David!' and yowling so loud that everyone went dead silent and the neighbor's dogs started to bark!"
"I think I blocked that from my mind."
"Or you forgot it after her boyfriend did brain damage to you and put you in the hospital for three weeks," Chester laughed.
"For the record, she said she'd broken up with him," David corrected.
Chester smirked. "Yeah. Then her boyfriend broke you up. Hey... do you still have the scar?" he asked. David blinked, then turned his head to the side. He moved his left hand through his fur on around the underside of his right wrist where it'd been broken all those years ago. He nodded. "You could probably get rid of the scar if you wanted."
"I don't," the young man with the wolfen torso said, finally finding the option for cloths. "Oh, here it is. Size to fit, 'click'," he said hitting the on-screen button. His white shirt fell more loosely on his body, closer to how it'd been earlier. "Keep this option selected for Future transformations? Um. No. Just me," he clicked again.
"That's gunna be real important in a few seconds when you try and whip out that tauric lower body while you're still wearing pants."
"Good idea. Let me make sure the awareness is on because I don't want Adidas branded horseshoes."
Chester blinked and leaned in to the camera slowly. "You can make people unaware anything is weird?" David nodded. "And you're not doing that wh—ait. Wait. Exhibitionist." David raised a finger to disagree then lowered it. "See, I know you. What'd be the point of TFing if no one knows you did it," Chester grinned, waving a finger at him. "You saucy bitch."
"We'll get there," David smirked. "OK. This one's a dangerous one, Redpaw... I'm gunna change my head and hope it doesn't change my mind."
"Yes. Perfect. Make sure the camera as aimed at you and if anything goes wrong, I will somehow get to you and stop bad things from happening after a travel time of—" Quietly, the man with the furry upper body turned to look into the camera. In his love of transformations, Chester had gotten carried away with the fun. The outcome he was describing in a joking voice could actually happen and wasn't actually humorous to David.
"My bad," Ches' hands went up in front of him, defensively. "New idea: can you set the TF to Revert after a set amount of time unless you ask it stick? Like changing your monitor settings...?"
Reaching for the keyboard, David found such an option after a few keystrokes. "Looks like I can. One minute?"
"Nah. Unless you turned right into a monster, you might not even notice something was wrong in one minute if you seemed fine at first and then you'd accept it not realizing." Chester steepled his finger together. "Half hour is longer than it'd take me to get to you anyway. So... five minutes?"
"Five minutes," David repeated, moving his cursor over Enter after striking a few keys. He hesitated for a moment, his left hand hovering over the left mouse button. "One sec," he said, shifting the camera arm so his phone was closer to his face. Looking at the screen like it were a mirror, David took a breath and tapped Enter.
I'd like David to make some remark about how five minutes turned into five days as I struggled to finish everything that was this TF, but it just wasn't seamless. Luckily, I wrote this story to allow for author comments in the middle of a passage so this sudden first-person doesn't feel completely out of left field. Anyway, almost two weeks later, OOC...
"Ahh... its tickling inside my eyeball," David said, his left eyelids twitching. The dark brown slowly bled into a golden yellow, the pupil seemingly fragmenting at the edges as the perfect black circle of humanity shifted more into the now golden iris. The white of his eye shrunk into the now darkening edges of the socket which blossomed outward into the newly arriving fur of his face. The percentages from earlier kept the sclyra visible so that his eyes were still more human in appearance than a regular wolf.
David closed his still human right eye. "I can't see the red in my poster." Over David's shoulder, he had a Super Metroid poster of Samus Aran and all the major bosses from that game in a big action pose. Her helmet and torso armour; the form of the dragon-like pirate boss, Ridley; the brain and eye of Mother Brain; and the inside of the titular Super Metroid were all now a brownish yellow instead of red or purple. "I'll have to fix that."
The black fur at the edge of his right eye's socket colored back into the timberwolf grays as the fur traveled up the side of his head, around his ear. From inside the ear rushed outwards tuffs of fur which filled up the human-shape before it pushed upwards into a point. As his ear slid up his head, David could feel it forming into a triangular shape, shifting in place as he was suddenly able to pick up sound details from his room he hadn't before. Reaching up with his left hand, he could feel just a small dip at the bottom corner where his earlobe barely remained.
Chester leaned forward towards the camera. "Color-loss, but hearing improved?" he inquired. "Is everything too loud... am I?"
David shook his head as his hair thickened around his ear, shifting away from black but not entirely, ending up as a kind of dark gray with lines of white hairs within it. "I wouldn't call it louder," he spoke through his still-human mouth. "Clearer? No? Yes. It's like... I pick out more of the sounds I could hear if they were alone... but also I hear closer sounds that were undetectable before."
"Uh, can you elaborate?"
He closed his eyes, his one wolfen ear turning to face the direction of the sounds as he mentioned them. "I think one of the air conditioning fans is loose," he explained as his hair somewhat lengthened and the changes moved around the back of his head towards his other ear. "As I move my head, I can hear the lens on my phone refocusing on me." The fur rippled over his left, still-human ear and covered up over the backside of it, surfing the change into a triangular ear like the other. "I hear my heart, though muffled," he added.
"What about far away? You're in a basement so probably n—"
"Well, I think I can hear the 'tink tink' of my engine cooling down."
"Engine? Of your car? Upstairs, through floors and walls, parked a the end of the—" David nodded. "Amazing."
David nodded, opening his eyes. His ears shifted forward as the change preceded through his left eye, his fur circling around his mouth back from his pink lips. Those narrow lines of flesh shifted into black and narrowed slightly. His mouth and nose began to elongate forward, pushing outward from the front of his face into a boxy muzzle with what from the side looked like a bit of an underbite.
David opened his mouth at the camera caught the shape of his still-human tongue a moment before it colored in redder and extended to the front of his jaw. Opening wider, he used the camera like a mirror, using that pink muscle to tongue the empty spaces where some of his newly lupine teeth were. His various 'scars' of cavities and pulled teeth were transferred to his new muzzle even as ten new teeth grew in to fill the length of his mouth. Most of his teeth were pointed now, his canines almost an inch and a half long.
The eyes of this half-wolf man went wide as the flattened out, pale-skinned nose darkened and turned black... shifting around into something much more canine. Taking in a slow, long breath, the difference between about five million and then two hundred million scent cells was staggering. Very quickly, David's transformed human-wolf brain was cataloguing the individual scents of everything in the room.
"Whoa," he spoke, but his voice was slightly different as fur pushed downward from under his chin to his upper torso, clearly changing his voice box as it did. Whiskers erupted from his face to either size of his new nose. His thicker, darker gray eyebrows rose up upon experiencing the new scents. Those hybrid eyes turning to look at Chester. "It's like... like I can label things with my nose. If only I had words. I'm lacking for words here, Redfur."
"How do you feel, mentally?" his lanky friend asked. "Do you feel like a 'good boy'?"
David let go a soft growl, then caught himself. "Huh... well. I don't think I liked being referred to like a dog. Actually, dogs seem a little freaky to me now... with their misshapen faces and defference to humans..."
"Honestly? Valid—from a wolf's perspective, sure... but maybe a little a little speciest. What's your feeling on cats?"
Searching his thoughts, David frowned a bit. "We don't usually hunt the same kind of prey?" He took in another slow breath. "I do kind'a want to build a pack now," he offered as a thought. "Nothing too 'Wolf or Dare', but something more than being alone. I shouldn't be alone."
"I don't know what that is, but it sounds interesting... in fact, you sound a bit monogamous."
"Kind'a thought of myself as more polyamorous."
Chester grinned. "Uh-huh. How's that working out for you?"
Leaning back toward the computer, David shrugged his new shoulders. "Can't say I've been trying very hard on that front... I don't really expect anything more than 'friends with benefits' while I have trouble supporting myself." He looked through the existing options about his current settings as he spoke. "I work for my grandparents all summer, save, get an apartment in the months between summers while finding odd work to do, then end up back here the next summer. Not exactly the type of reliable income or setting that one might look for in a mate. Kind'a 'losery'."
"You're not a loser, David. People's lives are better because you're in them. That makes you a good person."
"I didn't say anything about being a good person, which I'm not... I just try to be a good person. Also... being a good person does not preclude you from being a los—"
"—Dude," Chester interrupted David's thought. The lone word held the words 'stop, and listen to me' within it by way of Ches' tone. David's ears shifted to face the camera microphone and his eyes followed suit, looking towards Chester. "Anyone can make mistakes. Owning those mistakes... trying to correct them or repair the damage as best you can... that makes you better than assholes like Junior." Raising his voice slightly, he added: "You are not your father."
David looked to Chester's image in the bottom corner of his phone's screen, then away. He didn't look at us this time, but he thought about his situation. "You know, there's a lot of alternate stories of people who take this device, this Chronivac, and use it for punishment... revenge... or just a lot of sex..." he said.
"I like all those things," Chester said, then tried to laugh it off when David shot him a look.
David sighed. "I mean... right, but... I've often been asked, when I LARP or play a video game with moral choices, why do I always try to be the hero. And, the truth is, I can't really help people as I am. I can't give money. I can only really be an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, or that guy'o'll come help you with a flat tire in the middle of the night."
"David... most good people don't make good money or have power... and people who get enough money and power that they could massively help people often managed as much because they were bad already," Chester offered. "More importantly, you're talking about the paleskin, David Nicolaus Scott the Third... not this new David, this wolfie with a MacGuffin 'who could—dare I say it—change the world!'"
Leaning forward towards the computer, David stared through the screen. "I suppose I have to start thinking long term. What can this thing do and how can it help? I don't really want to take away people's autonomy. I want them to be themselves, right?"
"Counter-point," Ches interjected. "What about bad people."
"Who gets to determine that?"
"Right now? You do. You have the Chronivac." David's left ear flicked toward the camera, but he didn't look at Chester this time. "The 'needs of the many', David," his friend said. David's eyes shifted to look at him, wondering what he was getting at. "You don't want to change people against their will, and that's good and noble and all that... but pure people finish last. Be the Shadow Lord, break some eggs. Always be trying to do the right thing, and if you mess up, try to fix it or do better." Chester shook his head, "But, remember, do not tolerate the intolerant. Punch Nazis," Chester chuckled. "I for one, believe in you."
David sat back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. He smiled. "A part of me knows you're right."
Chester lifted one eyebrow. "And the other part?"
"Well," he tilted his head, eyes looking directly into the camera. "That other parts knows you're trying to make sure I'm in a good mood so I'll transform you into something you want." With that, David looked back at Chester, he reached up with his left hand he pulled his eyelid downward while sticking out his long tongue. Chester laughed. Ceasing his akanbe, David looked back at his computer screen. "OK. Feels like ages since this started, so let's finished it..."
"My timer says almost four minutes... let's give it one more."
In truth, David wanted to howl. There was a freedom in his transformation... something definitely felt right about this, even though it was only half done. He closed his eyes taking in the more detailed scents and sounds. Focusing on his experience so far, he realized he both wanted to be transformed as well as transform others. Perhaps he wouldn't keep this new form, or maybe it would become his new default. Who was to say?
"Thoughts?"
"I'm glad I'm in my room so I don't have the urge to mark things as my territory."
"Hah!"
The Chronivac beeped from the speakers of David's computer, getting his attention. "Do you want to commit changes: 'accept' or 'revert'?" Smiling, David hit 'accept' and then started clicking around the screen to look at other options.
"Hey, before you go on, do some clean-up," Ches suggested. "Tweak down your wolfie thoughts a bit, maybe. Based on Francesca's reaction from almost twenty years ago, it wouldn't hurt to lengthen your tongue to maybe Gene Simmons levels—"
"Weird," David said, but made that edit along with the others while Chester spoke.
"—I think wolves lack a taste receptor humans have, so restore that if it's gone. Uh, oh, I was thinking... you could restore your regular human eyesight, but what about tetrachromia... is that an option?"
"Uh... Well, I do see tetrachromia and pentachromia as options. This is, like, color-depth, right?"
"Right. It's how many different kinds of color variation you can see. Wolves are dichromatic, two kinds. Humans are trichomatic, mostly. Some are tetra with four, but only double X's, and it's super-rare... and I guess some birds are pentachromatic which, based on the naming, must be five. So they're basically Ultra High-Dynamic Range of color, I guess?"
"Neat," David responded with a shrug, cuing up all the changes and hitting 'Change' to execute them. "No reason not to be the best wolftaur I can be." He looked around the room with his new level of vision, then shook his head and returned to the screen. "And now I see imperfections everywhere." He blinked a few times, seeing that even his phone screen didn't have the perfectly consisted colors he thought it did.
Shaking his head, David moved on to another place in the application. After a moment or so, he told Chester what he'd found: "Mythical Presets... there's, like, a dozen kinds of werewolves, so that's neat. Naga, Kitsune, tons of Yokai really, Cerberus, dragons, vampires, sirens... and plenty of generic centaur options." Chester watched patiently as David scrolled through the list. "Ah. Just like I guessed, there's a 'maintain upper body' option on transformation..."
"Hey." David looked over at Chester at his interjection. "You're probably gunna have to move your camera back. Horses are big, and you don't want to bump it."
Standing up, the half-wolf man pushed his desk chair back towards the door with one foot while moving the camera arm backwards. Checking the preview on the screen, it looked to be a shot of most of the room now. Looking around, David checked the floor for cloths and drawing notebooks and shoved them out of the way. After a moment, he'd tidied up enough to feel like he shouldn't trample anything.
"Also, just saying, it might be time to loose the pants."
"Yeah, about that... you still recording?" Chester responded affirmatively. "Then how about we keep this PG-13? Just saying... we could post it on YouTube, yeah?"
"You tease."
David lifted his wolfie head, thinking about that. "I mean... yeah. You're not wrong there. Think about it. We can do different videos later for the OnlyFurs." Chester rolled his eyes, then they both laughed briefly. David shook his head. "Oh, man. This is so weird. Free advertising for the company, I guess."
"You think TDL is a front or is there a real place called 'TransDem Labs' out there somewhere? If the universe is, in fact, a simulation, that Emitter could have literally been dragged and dropped into your mailbox."
"Might be a like a Dev Room... like the Insomniac Museum?"
"Maybe." David looked over his options... 'keep upper half', 'workhorse centaur' and put a finger to his chin. "OK. I dunno how long I want a misshapen portion of body as big as a horse, even for a minute. Maybe that's me."
"You could 'poof' it. Wasn't 'instant' an option?"
"Poof TF, huh? I guess, for science, I should learn how jarring that is...?" Chester grinned and gave him a thumbs up. "Poof it is."
I know, I know. Instant transformation can really suck, but look how much I described above! I meant to post this a day or two after the last portion because people on CYOC are going to want Choose Their Own Change and I just haven't fulfilled that with any physical changes in this branch until this passage. This is just me cashing in the credit of all the above descriptions because I personally need this done!
Still, it isn't without its impact, literally. David's khaki pants were tight against his new lower body, a giant Clydesdale horse. The torn lower legs of them from years of use now puffed up with thick feathers of white hairs coming down from his fetlocks. Those legs stumbled, though, as the sudden increase in height had caused David's head to impact with the white popcorn ceiling above him, breaking it, and causing the debris cover his head.
David's wolf ears swiveled towards his phone as Chester called out his name in surprise. He took a step backwards, flicking his new tail in surprise and knocking over the desk lamp on the shelf beside his bed. Turning in place, he felt very confined in the room all of sudden, the muscle and power of the horse body like what he'd imagine a bulbous insectoid abdomen being in the way might feel like. Setting the lamp back on the shelf, he tapped his hoofed feet against the floor with auidable clops as he did so.
Shifting his mass in a counter-clockwise direction, David positioned his upper body back in front of the computer. Trying not to bump into anything, he slowly leaned forward. With his big butt up in the air, he'd knelt down towards the computer keyboard which had become out of reach due to the height difference. There, he selected the horse-only portion of his body, made a few quick keystrokes and chose the same timberwolf Preset he'd picked before. Since he was still the one user with the Emitter, he reactivated the 'live changes' option and slid the slider very slowly from horse to wolf.
The thick batch of long, white hair that was his tail shortened up and flattened down into a gray wolf tail with some white strands within it. His hooves grew back into mammalian digits, shifting to become lupine with four toes sized not unlike his hands were. The khaki pants hid much, but he could feel movement and changes in his genitals, not the least of which was the rigidity of his dick now that it had a baculum.
Claws made tick-tick noises on the concrete floor as he stepped back and forth on his brand new quadruped legs while his body shrunk. After a moment, he realized he was shorter than he'd been while human. While keeping his form mostly wolf below the waist, he entered in 5'5" into the blank and checked the option to size proportionally. This ended with his wolf lower body being just a little bigger than a regular male wolf, a creature that already wasn't small... it just wasn't as big as a horse.
"If not for those pants, I think you'd look majestically feral as fuck," said Chester from the phone screen. "But khaki pants over a wolf form just looks silly... taking you from a 9 to a 3, easy." He laughed, leaning back from the screen. "But, you OK? How's your head?"
David rubbed the back of his head with his left hand. "Hm. Hurts, but made me think of something... around these parts a wolf'll get shot," he said, looking through the more recent mystical options. Selecting one of the werewolf choices, he choose the 'regeneration' perk and applied it to himself. After a few seconds, the knot and bruise that he could feel on his head went away. "There we go."
"What'd you do?" Chester wondered, not seeing any physical differences through the pixelation of the streamed video.
"Werewolf regen," David responded nonchalantly. "No idea if that includes extra damage from silver, but I doubt I'll be in a situation to find out."
"Weakness are fun."
"True. Flaws are key to a good character, but... the possibility of being weak to silver reminded me that raisins and chocolate kill canines and I should probably fix those," he smirked. "While I'm at it, let's make sure I know what this Preset is called or if I can rename it."
Chester tapped his chin. "OK, So, explain presets to the audience."
"In a coding sense, Presets are referential. Right now, DavidScottPreset0420 is the default, so let's not use that that name. I haven't come up with a cool one yet, so let's just go with wolftaur-DS." David glanced at the screen, typing the name change. "Basically, this Preset is tied to the one who created it—me, in this case. It exists somewhat ethereally, so to target it, I think you have to be in range of me. These other, pre-installed Presets just are and cannot be changed because, well, I assume their probably tied to some in-game item that I'm obviously not near. Could be anything anywhere, or could be an in-universe TransDem sever that just houses them all."
Chester blinked. "So... referential. Does that mean if you change other people with that Preset that any changes you make to the Preset itself will change them?"
"If I take the meaning of Presets, then yes. There's no instructions or wiki entry I can find, so this is a lot of guessing... and Presets are not exact copies, generally... I think." He turned the camera to look at the screen for moment. "See? Like how human bodies have variables of height, intelligence, color, and so-on... you can actually include many possibilities so if you aim at a group of people and hit the button, they won't all look exactly like you... or one version of the preset, whatever."
"But you could?"
"Make them look exactly like me? Sure. But I think that'd make more senes to do with the 'clone' options. I mean, the Emitter only works at a certain distance, but Preset or Clone TF's seem like they'd cascade like awareness? As I update my existing Preset, everyone using it should also update."
Chester was zipping up his coat when David looked back from the computer screen. "So," Chester began, "Any last minute changes before I end this video?"
"Well, I'm just gunna change my lower body wolf from male to hermaphrodite... which I'm not sure is the correct term, but the Chronivac made some mention of archaic terms over morality, so basically I'm just making myself both of the usual mammalian sexes," he said as breasts slowly began to push out from his upper torso. "Whoops. No. Yes to the Preset, no to me personally having breasts." He shifted a bit as he sat, his testicles being pushed forward by his new spade hidden within his pants.
"Really? No breasts?"
"I mean... I'm fluid so. Let's just say, 'not today'."
"Fair. Fair."
"Also, I know I just knocked over my lamp with my tail," David smiled, as he clicked through the options. "Man... my tail. That just feels good to say. Anyway! The tail. I've always been a fan of comically big fluffy tails." David pulled the slider with one hand on the mouse, his body sitting like a dog would. He an Chester watched as the his wolf tail seemed to lengthen up behind him. "Wolf tails are usually about two fifths the length of their body... skunk tails are more like 90% and also the fluffy I'm looking for, so—"
David kept fiddling with the settings until he was happy with his tail. It was as far across as his quadruped body—about five foot—and about as wide. He moved it around towards his front with new muscles and hugged it close while Ches watched. The grin on David's face was infectious and the lanky man smiled.
"Neat," Chester said, breaking a moment of silence. "So... what about me. Can an I—" and an 'Ode to Joy Dubstep' began to play from David's shrunken iPhone 12. "Sounds like you're getting a call. Before you answer, can I come over?"
"Probably. But let me answer first. Could be an emergency?"
"What are the chances—"
"Authors," David said, thumbing towards the nothing in his universe that was us. He put Chester on hold and took the call.