The dark purple collar still lay where it had appeared sometime after the transformation had begun. Attached to it were a couple metal tags, each stating the name of the canine they belonged to and how the pooch was licenced and up-to-date on their shots. Staring at the collar, able to make out some of what was printed on the tags from where she sat, Lisa wanted to kick herself for not putting it on Nikki. But now the dog had gotten lose, and it seemed the point was moot.
With a sigh, she thought, "Jeff, not Nikki," as she attempted to make herself remember her brother's name, and reaching toward her laptop, she pressed the power button.
As the machine booted up, the eleven-year-old girl worried her lip as she waited. Having been almost a week since his disappearance, Lisa wondered what had possessed her brother-turned-dog to run away. Her first thought was, as her dad had said, "Nikki's gotten loose," that Jeff had gone in search of a way to turn himself back. Hearing the computer make its subtle musical tones and seeing the log-in screen appear, she no longer believed this was why Nikki had gotten out. Finding it hard to think of the pooch by her former brother's name, let along consider the possibility the canine had been her brother, she understood why, just as she was certain she knew the reason why Nikki gotten loose.
Mouse cursor zipped across the screen and she double-clicked on the icon for the Chronivac. It was within this programme she'd discovered a number of things, some of which she'd done, some she hadn't. Opening the software and accessing the saved file on Nikki, Lisa thought back to how, a couple days after the dog's disappearance, she'd opened the file with the intent of turning her brother back, but had been alarmed to discover alterations to the programme, some of which had taken her some time before she found them. Reading through all the information, the eleven-year-old thought the most glaringly obvious was the changes to Nikki's brain. Having set it up so that, no matter how much the other changed, the human one would be the dominate mind, whilst the canine would be secondary, with an ease to slip betwixt the two, thus ensuring, no matter how much changed, Nikki would be a dog with a human mind.
But something had switched sometime after Nikki got out. Lisa wasn't exactly sure how to explain it, but it was almost as if the human mind and canine mind had not so much flipped, but had merged. And even that wasn't completely accurate. Struggling to formulate an understanding of what was happening to Nikki's mind, the best she could get to was the dog mind was swallowing the human one, leaving behind a canine mindset with a higher-than-average intelligence, sentience, and understanding than an average dog.
Shocked when she'd first saw this, Lisa had tried to undo it, to make the programme stop from stripping the humanity from her brother. But, for reasons she still didn't understand, the option had become locked, and after some fenagling with the software, she figured out this had happened as an automatically-activated safety feature which had kicked in when Nikki had gotten out of the yard, and was meant to help protect the subject, ensuring other options still remained and worked. Hating what it was doing, wanting it to stop, she'd almost tried to change her brother back right at that moment, but found herself distracted by something else she'd found.
Originally, when she'd created Nikki, turned her brother into a beagle bitch, she'd set the age as being at locked at five months until the transformation was complete. Glancing at the age indicator, she saw it had shifted to, eight months, and trying to adjust it, she found it was still locked. In addition, the age was no longer locked at the subject remained so until the change was done, but rather Nikki was now aging the normal rate of a canine until she reached her max age, which had been changed to twenty-six, at which point she'd die the normal death of a canine who'd lived a full, heathy life. Hating the safety feature, believing now, more than ever, the reason Nikki had run away was because it was now in her nature, that of a dog who'd smelled or seen something and had gotten after it, Lisa found she couldn't look at the profile any longer. Closing it, she pulled up her own profile.
A couple days prior, she'd scanned herself into the programme with the intent of punishing herself for what she'd done. But, as she'd read over the information, she found herself unable to do so. Things she was certain she knew had been altered, with the biggest being her memory and knowledge of having an older brother named Jeff. Looking at the timer which had appeared under this bit of information, she saw it had ticked down more since she'd first discovered it, and the information which told her she still possessed anything about her brother had dropped even lower. Having found this also was a safety feature meant to keep those with dual-knowledge from suffering a psychosis, among other issues, Lisa despised it as much as the parameters which had altered the dog's profile. Knowing she'd eventually forget about who Nikki had been, that sometime with the next four days, her own mind would be overruled and she'd cease to see, to remember, to know, about Jeff, something which was already becoming difficult and required her to force herself, she again tried to remove the timer, to shift her awareness back to what it had been, but found it impossible.
With a grunt of annoyance, she closed her profile. Unable to articulate how much she'd come to loath the software, wishing she'd never messed with it, never even learned about, she re-opened up Nikki's file after a minute, as well as another she'd created. Scanning through the canine's information, seeing nothing beyond the handful of things she'd noticed before had changed, with the biggest which, in her opinion, caused her alarm was what was happening to the mind, she wondered how much longer before there was nothing left but a dog - body, mind, and soul. Switching to the other file, she scanned over what was printed on the screen.
She'd always intended to change her brother back, even if, at first, she'd been unable to admit it to herself. Now, with what had happened, she was more certain she had to do so, before it was too late. The problem was, because of the permanency option, Jeff original profile was gone, replaced by Nikki's. Unhappy with what she'd done, she wanted to undo it, but, the problem was, to do so, she'd have to rebuild the teenage boy from memory. This led her to the issue of how she didn't fully know everything about Jeff. There were things a person kept to themselves, only revealed to specific people, and Lisa was quickly learning how people behaved, acted, their mindset, and other attributes of what made a person who they were. Thinking she had a solution, but not liking it, she'd set out to rebuild Jeff. Finding it too difficult to make a teenage male, as there were so many complications which needed to be considered, she resigned herself to having to make her sibling younger than she was. Settling on nine, she deliberated on another point for a bit before deciding to leave Jeff female. Trying to decide if she was still crossing a line by doing so, Lisa found herself conflicted and for a bit, flipped the sex/gender option back and forth before deciding to leave it at what she'd first set it as.
With a scan over the information, she read how Nikki would be a nine-year-old tomboy. Lisa felt this would give the other the best option of being what they originally had been, whilst having a foot in what they'd become. Leaving it set so Nikki would always have the tendencies to being a tomboy, she left the sexual preference, when they developed that far, as being toward guys, the current height of 3'10", weight around 50lbs, with a max height and weight of 4'10" and 104lbs. She set the hair colour as being a medium-to-light brown, with it always kept at about shoulder length, whilst the girl’s skin tone would be fair to pale. Body hair had been reduced to nothing, leaving Nikki with only two thin eyebrows and the hair atop her head. Dragging the mouse over a couple options she'd missed, Lisa set the breasts, when they finished developing, at a max of a 32B, with Nikki disliking the option of wearing bras, but would do so only if she had to, otherwise she either went without, if she could get away with it, or wore nipple pasties. Hoping she wasn't again overstepping some boundaries she shouldn't, Lisa adjusted a few more things, hoped everything was all right, and saved the file.
Her sense of doing the right thing even more certain, Lisa hovered the mouse over the option to active the changes, but didn't click it. There was still something within her which questioned whether she had the right, to which she argued she did, as she was correcting a mistake she'd made, whilst another wondered if Nikki would appear back home here, or if she'd go from being a dog to a human wherever she currently was. Having no answer to this, but hoping it would all work out, she deliberated a moment longer before she double-clicked.
Before her, the screen flashed, went blank for a second, and then a box popped up. With a groan of frustration, Lisa read "Unable to execute transformation. Subject out of range. Bring subject within range and try again," and seeing Nikki would have to be a certain distance, she calculated, based on the range the programme gave her, the furthest the dog could be was within the back yard. Leaning back in the desk chair, staring at the computer screen, a sense of despondency coming over her, Lisa could only think of one thing at the moment - "Shit."