“It’s here, it’s here, oh good golly gosh, it’s actually here!” Wendell burst into his dorm room with an unusual amount of enthusiasm. Tucked under his arm was a cardboard box that looked like it had been stamped by a half-dozen customs agents.
Wendell’s roommate Harris waved. He propped his other arm up and awkwardly tried to point out that he was currently on a phone call.
“Yes dad, I know you spent a lot on the sports pass. Yes I’ll attend the next game…” Harris gave Wendell a sympathetic look at his roomie bust out the box cutters.
Harris’ dad was going on about the importance of school spirit and fostering camaraderie with his fellow classmates. He’d heard this one a few times by now. The sophomore did like his fellow classmates! But he was also a computer science major. His wild weekends typically included late board game nights, visits to the used PC thrift store, and various shenanigans with the campus’ 3D printer.
Speaking of old tech, Wendell was pulling something beige out of his cardboard box. Harris was pretty good at identifying ancient hardware, but this one was a mystery. It looked vaguely like a webcam? But that was a comically chunky serial port dangling off the back end.
“Yeah, uh huh. Okay, I’ll bring Wendell to the next game! Gotta go, bye!” Harris finally hung up his smartphone. He turned to his roommate, “Whatcha got there?”
“The Chronivac finally arrived!” Wendell was practically bouncing in front of his desk.
“The… Chronivac?” Harris watched his roomie tear through the packaging. “That reality altering device you read about online?”
“The one and the same!” Wendell beamed, “I knew that eBay saved search would pay off!”
“Uh huh,” Harris chuckled softly. Wendell was clearly really excited about this. Last time Harris had dragged Wendell out to a football game he had spent most of the time just trying to teach him the rules. Wendell normally wouldn’t let a comment like that just slide. “So someone successfully cracked reality altering tech twenty years ago, the company mysteriously vanished, and someone just… puts one up on eBay?”
“I know, right? What luck!” Wendell beamed.
“There seems to be a small hole in your plan,” Harris laughed as he watched Wendell pull a CD jewel case out of the box. There was a crack running along the front, naturally. “Your laptop can’t work with any of that old tech.”
“You think this is the only thing I bought?” Wendell reached into his desk and pulled out two big box mailers. He quickly tugged out a USB CD drive, and the right looking dongle for the Chronivac.
“Oh wow. You spent a good chunk of change on this. I didn’t even know they made serial to USB-C adapters,” Harris watched his roommate at work. Wendell hovered over his laptop excitedly before finally taking a seat.
Harris pulled up his own desk chair. The CD spun to life without throwing up any obnoxious comparability errors. The install process went surprisingly smoothly. Halfway through the setup wizard the software asked for Wendell to plug in the Chronivac. It didn’t seem to mind at all that it was using a dongle.
“These guys must have coded this by the book for it to still run,” Harris leaned forward. “You really think it’s going to work?”
The small emitter device clicked to life. A red LED readout on the front indicated that it was apparently in “scanner” mode.
Wendell’s computer let out a surprisingly quaint retro chime. The text on the screen was simple.
Welcome to the Chronivac 4.0! Please Register Owner:
• Wendell Chambers
• Harris Lees
Both of their names were hovering in the middle of the screen.
Harris leaned forward, “I don’t have a user account on your system, do I?”
Wendell shook his head, “No?”
He clicked his name in the window. The computer let out another retro beep, then pivoted over to a screen with an absurd number of fields. Before any of them could populate however, a small dialog appeared.
Updates available, would you like to apply now?
“Huh, I didn’t expect their update servers to still be online. Uh… Sure?” Wendell clicked the button.
The fans on Wendell’s computer clicked on. The installer and initial screens were pretty old school looking program windows. They were definitely running on one of his system’s older compatibility modes. Suddenly the Chronivac software disappeared from view. When it popped back up, Wendell and Harris were staring at a sleek modern interface. It was using all the latest stylings, and the controls seemed to be optimized for Wendell’s touchscreen laptop.
Wendell clicked through the new welcome message. “Welcome to Chronivac 8.4…? Is TransDem still putting out updates for-“
“Holy shit it’s you!” Harris pointed at the computer.
Sitting in the middle of the main Chronivac window was a 3D model of Wendell. It was flawless. Not only had the software manage to perfectly capture the likeness of the short black haired sophomore, but it had perfectly reproduced his current outfit. The plastic black glasses resting on his face were the identical frame design, and the lettering on his engineering department shirt were just as faded as his shirt in real life.
Harris’ pointing finger briefly brushed up against the surface of Wendell’s touch screen. Immediately the model started to spin. It was fully animated as it turned in place. The shirt flapped, the lighting changed, and the little model even held its arms out briefly to right itself as it finally came to a stop.
“It- It’s actually real…!” Wendell immediately started clicking around the interface.
The application knew all sorts of things about him that wouldn’t be saved anywhere on his PC. A clever app could look up his name and birthday, maybe his eye color, but there’s was no way it could know his hair was currently 1.3 inches long. Well, maybe that’s what the emitter was for. Some sort of absurdly good imaging? But it knew he was an engineering major! It listed out his personality, his current hunger levels, and even a few of his hobbies!
Wendell slid his mouse across the screen. Every stat appeared to be a dropdown, slider, or free text field.
“Oh wow, I can change my age, my height… Even my species!” Wendell poked a few of the dropdown curiously.
“What’s ‘Awareness’?” Harris pointed at one of the sliders near the ever-present ‘Apply’ button.
“Oh, umm…” Wendell hovered over a tooltip. The app helpfully displayed: Sets the amount the target and surrounding individuals are aware of the specified change. He paraphrased, “It determines how aware you are of the change?”
“Huh,” Harris narrowed his eyes, trying to see the text from his chair. “Aware of the change…? Like how much you feel it as it happens?”
“Wait what? Oh man, no!” Wendell spun his head around. “I don’t think I want to be aware of the actual physical sensations. That sounds like it could be painful.”
“Better switch that off then,” Harris suggested.
“Right, good idea.” Wendel quickly tugged the slider all the way down to, 'Awareness: None'.
“So… what are you going to do with it?” Harris leaned forward.