"May--be we should--" started Andrew, but he stopped and put his hand over his throat. Mike hadn't heard Andrew's voice crack in decades--not since they'd started High School.
"Uh, guys. I--I don't think it's stop--ping," said James with his own voice cracks, and Mike looked around at them all, and sure enough they no longer could pass for High School seniors and juniors, but were increasingly looking more like lanky and out-of-proportioned freshmen with heads, hands, and feet that were too big for their shrinking bodies. Heck, Mike could only stare as their adam's apples were beginning to shrink back into their throats.
"Mi--ike, do something!" said Anthony.
"We got--ta get back to the computer!" said Mike as he turned to run up the stairs, only to trip over his feet as his athletic shorts chose then to slip down off his slimming frame. God he had hated middle school, which they were all quickly on the return to. After helping him back up, the four young teens grabbed their shorts to keep them up and rushed up the stairs and into Jeff's room to find the Chronivac continuing to run with an error message having popped up.
"What does it say?" asked a now completely prepubescent Andrew.
"Umm... error, current transformation cannot fit with current reality parameters, altering transformation to fit with reality. Altering relationships to fit with current known families," said Mike, recognizing the words as he said them, but for some reason he was having trouble remembering what some of the larger ones meant a second later. By now all of them were firmly on the boy side of puberty and had let go of their shorts as their shirts now hid them from any previous embarrassment they might have had.
"What does all that mean?" asked Anthony.
I--uh... dunno," admitted Mike as he kicked his now bare feet that could no longer reach the floor against the legs of the chair he was sitting in. The shoes and socks he'd been wearing until that moment were now on the floor his feet could no longer reach.
"Try control alt delete, my son--older brother says when in doubt to hit that!" said James, looking somewhat confused. Mike was confused as well--why would he call Jake his son when James was definitely the younger brother of the family. In fact they all were the youngest of their families--that's what had made it so natural for them to be friends since they started Elementary school together--they all knew the pains of being the little brother in the family.
"Sure..." said Mike, and he easily pressed the CTRL button and the ALT one near it, but tried to find the DELETE key but was finding it hard to understand what all the letters were saying. Why was he pressing these two buttons? This was kinda fun. Jeff never let him near his computer.
"Hey, squirts, whatcha doing in my room?" asked Jeff, and Mikey turned to see his big brother standing in the doorway, towering over them all like the giant he was. Mikey looked up to his big brother more than just physically. Jeff was always picking him and his friends up from preschool and took them to football games. At four years old, they were all too young to play, but they liked watching and cheering all the same--and next year Mommy promised that if he was good and big enough, he could play flag football!
"We wanna play on da compooter!" exclaimed Andy, completely unabashed of his inability to enunciate.
A ding from the computer drew the attention of them all. A new box appeared on the screen with writing on it--but Mikey could no longer remember what all that writing meant.
"If you wanted to play on my computer, I could set something up for you squirts like that Winnie the Pooh game you like, but this game--is too old for you boys to play, as are my clothes..." said Jeff, as he lifted Mikey out of the chair and put him on the bed in the humungous t-shirt that the four boys had found raiding Jeff's closet. Mikey giggled a bit, but stopped himself when he saw how stern Jeff looked. Had he done something wrong? He didn't mean to.
"Go back to Mikey's room boys, and get back into your clothes," scolded Jeff, and Andy, Tony, and Jimmy all nodded obediently and left the room, leaving Mikey and Jeff alone in the room together.
"So, what were you really trying to do Mikey?" asked Jeff once his other friends had left.
"It was their idea! I just clicked and pressed what they told me to!" protested Mikey as he grabbed at the end of Jeff's oversized shirt and twisted it in his tiny grip.
"You never could say no to peer pressure, could you. Well, Mikey, looks like I'm going to have to teach you to stand up for yourself one of these days. Luckily, whatever you had been trying to do, the Chronivac fixed the error you'd caused. Good to know the Chronivac can detect and fix problems that some transformations can cause."
Problems? Mikey hadn't wanted to be a problem. He felt overwhelmed at the thought of being a problem, and despite himself started to sniffle.
"I didna mean to... be... a... pwoblem," cried Mikey.
"Oh, Mikey..." said Jeff as he stood and scooped him up and held his little brother tight in his arms. "You are never the problem. You might create problems, but you yourself are never the problem."
It was something Mikey remembered Mommy had mentioned. Mommy was older than other mommies of the kids in his preschool, and that was a problem she kept saying over and over again--which was why Mikey was so sensitive to the word, and why Jeff was hugging the four year old out about it instead of teasing him about it.
"Get back over to your room and get changed and play with all your buddies," said Jeff as he put Mikey down on his bare feet. Mikey wiped his eyes with the sleeve of Jeff's oversized shirt and nodded and left Jeff's room to join Andy, Tony, and Jimmy. Jeff meanwhile looked back at the Chronivac and looked at the transformation log and was shocked to see that a few minutes ago Mikey hadn't been his little brother, but his Dad--and his pals had also been Dads of Jeff's friends and class mates. Apparently they'd tried turning themselves into young buff studs, but the Chronivac couldn't fit them into their families and have them all be 25--probably they'd all be too old to be the older brothers of their children. It ran a diagnostic and eventually landed on turning them all into 4 year old little boys instead. Jeff was amazed--from his perspective, if he hadn't looked at the transformation log, he wouldn't have ever thought his weepy little brother was ever once his father. The Chronivac had the power to completely reshape reality and change it. Jeff contemplated what to do next. He could return Mikey and his pals back to being adults, perhaps making some changes to the rest of reality to make their original wish of being 25 come true; but Jeff felt weird at the thought of making Mikey... his baby brother older. It felt wrong to him somehow. Even with the proof that this reality hadn't always existed, somehow to Jeff it felt more real than what the computer was telling him had been reality until a few minutes ago.
Jeff decided against changing Mikey and his friends--after all their transformation was set to expire on its own in 24 hours anyway. And likely whatever reality changes the Chronivac made to make the changes work with reality would expire with it.
But that didn't mean Jeff couldn't have some fun with this computer game...