Joe groaned in boredom as his little brother and sister were busy looking at the dumb props in the magic store. “Ughhh, dad…” He complained, “C’mon, can’t we keep going?” John sighed, “Now, Joe, your little siblings should be also allowed to go into any stores they want too.” Joe rolled his eyes. “Well, why can’t I just go on ahead like Lisa?”
“She’s almost 20, son. You, on the other hand, are still 15.” John said joking as he tousled his eldest son’s hair, “I’m almost 16!”, Joe protested, but John just chuckled. “Well, if you want, you can always go to the clothing store across from here with Jackie and your mother.” Joe huffed at the prospect. He didn’t want to look at girly clothing, but found the magic store especially dull. He knew how overprotective his father could be, but still found this a bit silly. He wanted to be independent. Especially as a twin, he was more than a little rebellious.
“Hey, hey, dad!” Came Kevin’s voice as he ran up to them, “That guy over there said he could show us some magic tricks! Can we go?” He said, gesturing to the friendly-looking store worker with a black top hat and velvet cape. “Heh, sure son.” John smirked, before turning to Joe, “Joe, you wait here, unless you want to come watch too.” Joe grumbled, “No thanks.” He said, pouting, annoyed as he rested his back against a wall. John let out a deep sigh, shaking his head, “You should really improve that attitude son, we’re here for your little siblings after all.” He said as he turned and walked back to watch the improvised magic show with Kevin and Amy.
Joe hated it, now they were going to be stuck here even longer, all because of that magician and his bratty little siblings. Looking at his phone, he could see no new messages from his friends, nor anything online. In even greater frustration, he put the phone back into his pocket and looked around. He silently browsed the shelves, looking for something to distract himself from the tedium, nothing but practical jokes and magic props, as he suspected.
Though as he gazed over the checkout counter though, something actually did catch his eye. It was a flyer of some sort pasted near the front with a QR code on it. Written above it was the text, in comic sans, “FREE DOWNLOAD: The Amazing One-Word Changing App :)”, along with some grainy, blurry photos of it’s interface. It looked dumb, but it claimed to be free, and Joe was willing to try anything to possibly entertain him on this bland mall trip. He got his phone back out and scanned it. There was a pinging notification sound as it downloaded, as he saw the app icon show up in the bottom of his screen. When he clicked on it, it opened to a camera and a search engine-like text box and a tutorial on how to use.
“1*: This app uses location data to pull up anything within 50 feet”
“2*: Select a target and the app will generate a sentence describing that target”
“3*: You may edit one word in that sentence”
“4*: Reality will shift to reflect the changes”
“5*: You can control whether you, your target, or the world at large is aware of these changes.”
Joe raised an eyebrow skeptically, “’Changing reality’? Pfft. What a bunch of bullshit.” He scoffed, but couldn’t hide his small smirk. He held out his phone as the app scanned around, “Let’s see what ‘changes’ we can make then.” He scrolled around. There was a large plush toy rabbit sitting nearby the counter, so he zoomed in on that. The text box suddenly changed to say “Generate Sentence?”. He shrugged and clicked on it, as a prompt suddenly popped up, “The pink plush bunny is sitting beside the counter.”
Joe’s finger wavered over the words, contemplating what to select. He didn’t believe it would work anyway, but still wanted to see exactly it would do, so to start off he decided on a larger change, and selected ‘bunny’. It now read “The pink plush wolf is sitting beside the counter.” He snickered to himself, “Who could ever believe this…” Then looked up from his phone, seeing a pink, smiling wolf plush toy on the chair. His eyes widened. “What the…” And looked back down at the app. The generate sentence button popped up again, and he clicked on it once more. “The pink wolf plush has just been changed from a rabbit.”
“No way…” He muttered in disbelief, “This can’t be real.” He clicked on it again, changing ‘Pink’ to ‘Blue’, hit enter, and looked back up. Now there was a large blue wolf plushie sitting there. “Holy fuck.” He said, looking back down at the app, “Is this serious?” Joe was shocked, but couldn’t explain it. Though, slowly, his surprised expression turned into a grin, “If that’s true… I wonder what else I can change then?” He selected the wolf plush once more, “The large wolf stuffed toy is resting by the table”. With a smirk, he changed it again. “The large wolf sex toy is resting by the table.” Suddenly he saw the plush wolf sporting a dildo strapped to it’s crotch, a ballgag in it’s mouth, and wrapped in bondage gear like a BDSM gimp. “Holy shit, this is real!” He exclaimed, laughing to himself. Maybe this trip wasn’t so bad after all? The possibilities were endless. Joe looked around, his mind going places. He might’ve found just the thing to alleviate his boredom.