The house dark, June McHenry paused as she let herself in. Wondering where Raquel was, if she'd gone over to Tanya's, June set her purse and briefcase down next to the small table in the front hall. Placing her keys in the dish, she didn't bother with the small lamp set atop the table and instead padded silently through the house. Familiar with where everything was, so long as Rachel hadn't left her backpack in a place it could tripped over, or a chair left pulled out, as she something did, June crept upstairs and toward her daughter's bedroom.
With the expertise of someone who'd done it thousands of times before, Mrs McHenry pushed the door open without a sound. Peering into the room, the first thing she saw was her daughter's laptop, something Mark had helped her build a few years before he'd disappeared. Seeing the it was displaying a maze screensaver, June grew sentimental as she thought about her husband and how he'd left for work one day and simply vanished somewhere on the way. Stepping into the room, still making no sound, her thoughts still on her missing husband and the father of their daughter, Mrs McHenry noted how the window had been left open, considered closing it, but was distracted when she saw the bed was occupied.
Her daughter, as nude as the day she'd been born, lay flat on her back, legs slightly spread, giving full display to what she'd been born with between her legs. Next to her, also nude, was Tanya, lying on her side, cuddled up next to the other teenage girl, an arm draped across Rachel's front and her hand cupping one of Rachel's breasts. Tempted to cover them up with the comforter left lying on the chair, yet also wanting wake them up, demand to know what it was they'd been doing, then for them to get dressed, June changed her mind. Telling herself, "At least it isn't with a boy," as she thought about the times she had done what she suspected Rachel and Tanya had done, though not until she was in college. Turning away from the two sleeping figures, thinking it best to give them some privacy, the older woman stepped across the room, reached across the desk to shut the window, but stopped when she saw a Blu-Ray disk in a jewel case lying toward the back of the desk, as if pushed there, then forgotten.
Curious to know what movie her daughter had been watching, she picked up the jewel case and read "Chronivac."
Unfamiliar with any sort of film, believing it had to be a science fiction, fantasy, or both, type of movie, June crept back across the bedroom. Shutting the bedroom door, she stole downstairs and headed for her home office.
Inside the bedroom, Rachel woke with a jerk. Thinking there had been someone in her room, it took a moment to ascertain she'd probably been mistaken and she'd been dreaming. Becoming aware of the hand cupping one of her breasts, she sighed in contentment. Rolling over on her side, she pressed herself closer to Tanya, and as the other girl shifted in her sleep, adjusted how her arm was slung over Rachel's side, Rachel yawned and drifted off back to sleep, her thoughts still on what she needed to take care of before her mother got home.
Downstairs, Mrs McHenry turned on her computer. Having not even bothered to turn on the overhead light, she sat in the darkened room and watched as the computer booted up, the Microsoft logo displayed for a couple seconds, then she was brought to her log-in screen. Entering her password, she waited for the PC to cycle through its normal stuff, closed things which opened automatically, which she couldn't shut off, and inserted the disk into the C drive. Expecting to pull up the movie player, June was surprised when instead it proceeded to download a programme. Clicking on the new icon which had popped up on the desktop, her first thought was to wonder what it was Rachel was doing with such a thing.
In a slow, meticulous manner, she scrolled through information, learned what it was she'd found in her daughter's room, thought it was something like the home and garden programmes she sometimes ran on her PC, considered going back upstairs to wake Rachel and demand to know why she had something which looked like a pre-surgery type of computer programme, but wanting to know more before she did anything, she clicked on a camera icon. Given instructions on where and how to stand, June pushed the desk chair away, stood, and did as the thing told her. Finishing with this, she sat back down, and started to scroll through the information the Chronivac presented her.
Profile on full display, she soon changed her mind, as it didn't seem as if what she was seeing had anything do with surgery. Some of the things, like switching a person's sex and gender, seemed like it could be applied, but options, like changing the species, seemed out a place for such a belief. Opening menus, popping open drop-down menus, but not clicking on anything, she was further perplexed with the option for a timer, a permanency selection, an ability to determine awareness, as well as other things. Returning to what she wanted to do, she almost shut down the programme, marched upstairs, and woke her daughter.
But, at the last minute, she decided to further see what the programme could do. "Afterward, then I'll have a talk with Rachel about it," she mused as she scrolled to the options for sex, gender, and species. Believing it might be some sort of fantasy RPG game, June left her sex and gender what it was, and after some deliberation, set her species as an Owl.
Not sure what to choose, she settled on making what she believed was a character a Giant Cuban Owl. Information popping up, she read through it, and after some thought, set the mind at eight-one percent owl, nineteen percent humanoid. Upping her intelligence and wisdom, she also shifted the current age to four and how long she'd live to three dashes. Next, she gave the character an aptitude for magic usage, thinking this would balance out how smart she was, as well as why the character was immortal. Satisfied with this, she ignored the permanent option, which had she given it some thought, she'd saw it was set so the changes would be permanent, switched the awareness to only her being aware, and in the process misunderstanding what it meant, tinkered with a handful of other things, including turning back on the option to be able to fly, before, satisfied, feeling she was ready to play whatever game the Chronivac was, she clicked save and the icon to execute the changes.
Expecting it would take her into the game, June was shocked when she was instead overcome with a series of cramps in her abdomen and a burning-itching sensation up and down her arms, legs and throughout her face. Rubbing furiously at the affected areas, frightened by what was happening, she tried to reach for the phone on her desk. Her arm twisted, she uttered a hiss of pain, then shock as her arm continued to twist in a new direction as her fingers shrank and receded into her hand. Wanting whatever was happening to stop, making a connection it had must have something to do with the computer programme, she tried to reach up with her other hand in an attempt to input new commands, but again hissed in discomfort when her arm refused to bend how she wanted it and before she could stop herself, she slammed her face into the top of the desk, almost as if she were attempting to peck at it.
The pain from doing this causing an explosion of bright flashes of light tinged with darkness to dance in front of her eyes, June had enough time to think, "Don't do that again," before her thoughts grew cloudy enough, it was hard to focus. Trying to push past this, even as her nose and mouth merged together and started to form a beak, all while her arms continued to morph into a pair of wings, sans feather, she uttered an inhuman sound as her posture suddenly shifted and she slipped off the chair. Lying on the floor, her clothes starting to slip from her as she dropped from around five six to about three feet, she flopped about uselessly for a bit before, tired, she lay were she'd fallen, breathing heavily.
Feathers forming, feet transforming into talons, June made a series of weak sounds. Horrified how little they sounded like words, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make herself move. Unable to do even that, her change speeding up, her last human thought was, "Must, get, thing, did, this, undo," before her mind was lost in those normal for a Giant Cuban Owl.
Reality shifted, and once the metamorphous of June McHenry was finished, the room she was in shifted from a home office to a TV room, all whilst the owl took on a transparent look until, like the room it had been in, it vanished, relocated to something more appropriate for her species. The shifting of the world getting faster and faster, the change rippled out beyond the now TV room, altering the house and the people who lived in it. Upstairs in Rachel's room, the two occupants slept on, unaltered with the exception of a sheet covering them and new memories forming. Recalling in her dreams her mother disappearing sometime after her dad had, Rachel briefly relived memories of going to live with an aunt, uncle and a cousin who was three years older than her before her dreams shifted.
The last of the new reality slipping into place, Rachel and Tanya continued to sleep as, downstairs, first Rachel's Aunt Melissa came home from marketing and advertising firm, then her Uncle Frank from the plant he supervised, and lastly her cousin, Jeff, a boy whose High School graduation ceremony was in a couple days.