As her friends talked about toppings and movies, Lucy joined in at sporadic points. Offering her suggestions, she waited until she was sure they had heard her, and were all engaged in the topic before she stated, "Be right back."
Slipping away, making a bee-line for the bathroom, she made a surreptitious check to make sure she wasn't being followed. Seeing nobody had really noticed her leave, she breathed a sigh of relief. Heading back to the home office, her mind on the Chronivac and the pop-up dialogue box she'd encountered when she'd scanned everyone, she wanted to know why the two new girls already had profiles. Sitting down in the chair and wheeling it closer, she minimised all the profiles except two.
Information Jennifer Grace and Felicity Blythe pulled up, she didn't want to go into too much detail, as snooping about the profiles seemed to Lucy almost an invasion of privacy. Scrolling and scanning as quick as she could, taking in little of anything, she stopped when she saw there was a timer set to end at 11.59pm on Sunday on Felicity's profile.
"Why would she had done that?" Lucy asked herself and checking Jennifer's, she discovered the same thing.
Confused even more, nothing seeming to make sense, she typed, scrolled, and clicked her way through the information until she discovered something she hadn't expected. Stunned by what she was seeing, Lucy sat back in the chair and struggled to process what she saw. Thoughts going wildly, she couldn't at first believe it when the Chronivac claimed Jennifer had at one time been her brother Jeff, and Felicity had been a boy named Alan, Jeff's best friend. Leaning forward, thinking, "I had an older brother?" she wondered if this was in any way true, and if it were, what had possessed the two creeps to change their sex and gender and sneak into her sleep over.
No answer came to her, and Lucy reasoned this made sense, as she didn't have the full picture. Spinning the chair about, she considered marching out to the main room and having it out with the two. Wanting to call them out in front of her friends, she almost did exactly this. But, at the last minute, changed her mind. Forcing herself to sit and remain where she was, Lucy soon posed the question to herself, "So what exactly should I do?"
On the one hand, she thought it might be best to leave things as they were. Confronting the two now might not work, and, to her way of seeing it, it might be better to get to the bottom of this when they reverted back. Yet, on the other hand, she didn't like the idea of, for whatever reason, these two had made themselves someone they weren't, lied to her and the other three, forced themselves on her and her friends, and, all in all, crashed her sleep over. Wondering how things might be different if this Jeff and Alan hadn't done what they'd done, Lucy wondered if maybe Jeff would have been tasked with keeping an eye on her and her friends or if their aunt would have still been given the task of babysitting them. Discovering trying to untangle this knot was starting to make her head hurt, Lucy wanted to leave things as they were and go back to hanging out with her friends.
"But I cannot let those two creeps get away with what they've done," she told herself as she focused her attention on the computer.
Positive she was well within her right to punish this Alan and Jeff for what they'd done, she scrolled through each profile. Thinking about what she could do, she toyed with the idea of transforming them back in front of everyone, turning them into something else, making is so Diana, Tanya, and Natalie were aware of who Felicity and Jennifer's truly were, among other ideas. Seeing the timer still counting down, she smiled as an idea came to her. Clicking on it, she tried to extend the time limit to a week, a month, a year, then four years. When this didn't work, she tried to turn it off.
A pop-up dialogue appearing after a number of attempts, she read it as it asked her if she was sure she wanted to do what she was trying. Thinking, "Serves them right," she moved the pointer over the "yes" option and double-clicked.
Immediately, the screen blinked and too Lucy's surprise, both profiles vanished. Starting to panic, not understanding what she'd done, she furiously began going through the programme, searching for the information. Not finding it, fearing she had somehow deleted it, and not sure how, if she had, she began to worry the fingernail on her left index finger as she tried to figure out what to do.
An idea coming to her, she hastily unplugged the remote-thing and hurried from the room. On tiptoes, she stole back to the main room. Seeing her aunt and the others were still discussing toppings, she aimed the remote and Jennifer first, then Felicity. This taking a couple tries, as everyone kept moving, sometimes getting in the way, Lucy breathed a sigh of relief when she at last got what she wanted. Moving as silent as she could, she rushed back to the office and plugged back in the emitter. The device syncing, she again breathed a sigh of relief when she saw two profiles reappear on the screen. Believing she was in the clear, and all she'd done was remove the timer, she muttered, "Serves them right," as she turned from the computer and left the room.
The whole thing taking no more than ten minutes, something which surprised Lucy, she rejoined the others. Nobody saying anything about her absence, as they'd all been busy discussing pizza, which it had been agreed to get two larges, one supreme, one with pepperoni, black olives and mushrooms, as well as an order of garlic knots. The matter settled, they group of girls headed for the living room, where they fell about and decided what to put in.