“Hee hawwwww!”
Jack clutched his sides. The bray just emerged from him. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t manage to hold it back. He scratched at his body. Everything felt tingly and wrong. It was like there was an itch he was trying to scratch, but he couldn’t quite locate it.
“Are you okay sir?” Thirty Six leaned down next to him with concern.
“Get the- Haw! -out!” Jack yelled at him. The beast didn’t need to be told twice. He quickly shuffled out of the room with the new recruits.
How could he be so stupid!? He usually left it primed for another change, but of course the braying mouse would be hovering on the apply button! How had the dumb beast managed to click it with his tail!?
Jack sat down in front of the ancient Chronivac. The beige tower and its large dome emitter suddenly looked a bit more intimidating to him.
The blocky interface was slow to respond on the small CRT display. Despite his poking and prodding, no form of “Cancel” button revealed itself to him. The thing absolutely refused to interrupt an in progress change!
Target: Jack Reed
Profile: Paper Corp Donkey 1.7a
Progress: 0.62%
Haw! This- This was really happening! Oh man. He hadn’t signed up for this! There had to be a revert! Or an undo! Or-
A backed up profile.
A chill washed over Jack. It was standard operating procedure for Paper Corp’s Beast Resources employees to back up their profile on the Chronivac in case this sort of mishap happened. Jack had been dutiful about it when he first signed up, but it had been a while since his most recent backup. He- He couldn’t remember when that would have been.
He clicked through the folder structure on the computer. Oh fuck oh fuck, it’s hard drive really did sound like it was on its last legs. He should have put an SSD in ages ago. Finally he found the folder he was looking for!
JackReed.Bak
Size: 15.8mb
Last Saved: April 27, 2013 10:42am
“Haw!?” Jack’s ears twitched upward in alarm. He didn’t even try to stifle the bray this time. That was... that was...
The progress bar next to his name filled in its first full block. The percentage ticked over to 1%, and Jack suddenly felt an alarming pressure behind him.
He should have known what was going on, but it took him a moment to pinpoint what exactly was happening. It felt like... someone was pulling on his tailbone? It was vaguely like getting pantsed. But his belt was still firmly in place. Haw, and it was making things incredibly uncomfortable!
His tail was growing in! Jack undid the clasp on his belt and hastily started to push his pants down. He kicked back his chair and watched as a solid three inches of fur-less tail slid out behind him.
It didn’t stay fur-less for long. The new appendage was growing a scruffy gray coat of fur. The color was immediately recognizable to Jack. Some part of him had expected the fur to mimic his natural brown hair, but no, he was going to look like every other Paper Corp Donkey. The tip of his tail tingled as the standard jet black fur started to grow out into a tassel.
Oh haw, he could actually feel it wag. The new sensations were almost enough to distract him from his panic. Jack reached down to touch it and-
“What the hell happened!?” A voice came from the doorway.
Jack felt his tail start to wag anxiously. His coworker Dale stared aghast at him. Jack could hardly blame him. It had been ages since this had happened to anyone. Err, wait, no, he just still had his pants pulled down.
Jack pulled his pants up the best he could. “Haw, one of the beasts clicked the mouse when my back was turned!”
“Oh man, you got hit by the Chronivac?” Dale stepped forward. “How?”
“I-“ Oh haw. Jack was not looking forward to this conversation. “I had it set to target everyone in front of the emitter. The donkey brushed the table and-“
“You said you should always individually select your targets?” Dale leaned around Jack to look at the monitor.
“Haw, well clearly I didn’t! Is there a Chronivac rep we can call or something?” Jack was doing his best to hold his brays in, but they kept leaping out when he got flustered.
“Yeah, but we haven’t upgraded to any of their new hardware or service plans,” Dale said. He was giving Jack a weird look. “You know that, right?”
“Sweet haw, now’s not the time for oneupmanship!” Jack huffed. His nostrils flared and didn’t go back down to their original size. Dale had risen through the ranks at Paper Corp really quickly. He was a bit of a try hard and always stayed late. It was no secret Jack was a little miffed when Dale got promoted to the same level as him. “Do you know how to undo this or not?”
“Let me take a look...” Dale hunched over the screen. He very pointedly de-selected and disarmed the current profile. Whoops, had Jack still not done that? Dale tried poking around in all the obvious places similar to how Jack had.
Then he noticed the file window that was open.
“Jack, you haven’t backed up your profile in a decade!?” Dale stared at him incredulously.
“I- Haw! I kept forgetting,” Jack squirmed next to the Chronivac. He kept reflexively scooting away from the emitter. It was really hard to look dignified when you were holding your pants up. “There- There’s probably a more recent copy than that somewhere?”
“How could you be this careless! Do you want to go back to being a bumbling university hire?” Dale poked around a few of the nearby folders. “Look, I’m sure we can fix this. Just uh- Stay there and don’t touch anything.”
Jack felt a weird sensation wash over him. It wasn’t another physical change. Was it the chill of suddenly losing a decade of his life? That- He wouldn’t actually be sent back down to an entry level position, right? He’d still know all his management skills from this rest of his career. The Chronivac could probably age him up to a rough approximate of what he was supposed to be. This was- This was going to be fine.
Dale got out his cell phone. He started dialing a saved number. “Hello, Mr. Smith?”
Haw! He was calling the head of Beast Resources! The real Mr. Smith.
“Woah, uh, we don’t have to-“ Jack mumbled softly. He tried walking forward to tell Dale to cut it out, but he just meekly stood next to the Chronivac.
“We’ve had uh- A bit of an incident here sir. Would you mind coming down to the Chornivac? You’re going to want to see this.” Dale looked at his coworker pointedly.
There was some chatter on the other end of the phone. Jack’s ears tried perking again to hear it.
“No sir, I’m not trying to talk like a character in a cheesy action film. I- Sir,” Dale sighed exasperatedly. He looked up at his coworker with a sympathetic smile, “Jack’s made an ass of himself.”