Something had shifted. As Felicity and Lucy sat in the living room, joking with the others, adding to the various conversation, each experienced for so brief a moment, it was almost as if it hadn't happened, a sense of a twitch in reality. Each dizzy for a fraction of a second, it was enough for them to realise on a subconscious level something was different, and then it passed for both.
For Lucy, if she'd been able to give any consideration to it, she'd understood a ripple effect had occurred as reality shifted too far, and the Chronivac, to prevent to many deviations in too many directions at once, had engaged safety protocols buried deep in its software. Doing its best to adjust and protect everyone from a potential fragmented reality, it dumped data, including anything about Jeff and Lucy's use of the programme in an attempt to punish two boys who'd crashed her sleep over.
Unfortunately, in the process of deleting anything on Jeff, it also purged large parts of Alan. Having enough to work on to leave Jennifer intact as the person she now was, the Chronivac struggled for a bit with Alan, before dumping the information. Leaving Felicity in place, it discovered holes it couldn't fix, which sent it into a loop as tried to adjust why there was a Diana, yet there wasn't, then got caught up and mixed its data as it also attempted to untangle connections, which it discovered existed, yet didn’t exist, between Jennifer, Diana, Natalie, and Felicity. Working to sort of what to purge, what to keep, and what to alter in an effort to keep everything from falling apart, it fixed one loop, then promptly got stuck in another.
From where she sat next to Natalie and Tanya, Felicity stopped what she was doing and grimaced as she got the worst headache of her young life. Next to her, Tanya asked, "You all right?" and nodding, Felicity stood and replied, "I'm going to get something for a headache."
"Bathroom cabinet over the sink, bottom shelf, I think my parents have some aspirin," Lucy offered.
Thanking her, Felicity slipped out of the room and headed for the bathroom. Inside, she reached to open the medicine cabinet, but stopped. Peering at the girl reflected back at her, she had the weirdest notion every when she suddenly thought she was actually a guy. And not just any guy, a teenage male. Almost laughing out loud at how absurd this was, thinking, "I'm a girl," she couldn't shake the feeling, even as she was overcome with puzzling, jumbled bits of memory.
As she stood in front of the sink, she recalled an alleyway and how she another person, a teenage boy no less, had done something there. But what, it was lost to her, as her memories jumped to her walking with Natalie to Lucy's house and to her meeting the teenage boy from the alley inside a house which looked a lot like Lucy's place. A name, Alan, coming to her, she wondered who this was, then had the strangest idea it was who she was. Unable to stop herself, she tittered aloud as she breathed, "That's ridiculous. I'm not Alan. I'm Felicity Blythe," though she felt there was something off about this. Trying to figure out what, she opened the medicine cabinet, located the aspirin, dry swallowed one, and left the bathroom.
Out in the hallway, she turned to head back to the living room to rejoin the others, but stopped. An idea coming to her, she figured she knew the best way to prove she was who she was. Heading toward the office, she noted someone had opened the window as she sat down at the computer. Her attention completely on the programme running, she missed the note which had been left on the desk, and closing the open dialogue box, not bothering to read anything about how it warned a subject was out of range, she instead pulled up her information.
Stuff on who she was appeared before her, and Felicity scrolled through it, searching for any hint or trace which might prove or disprove, as she hoped, the existence of this Alan. Discovering nothing, she felt this settled the matter, and about to stand, she couldn't shake the notion she was somehow this Alan person, not Felicity Blythe. Huffing, "Yeah, right," she remained where she was, trying to understand how and why she'd suddenly thought she'd been some creep who'd for reason she could fathom had wanted to crash a girl's sleep over. Staring at her profile, she wondered how to drive this confusion from herself, and after some time, she speculated, "Maybe if I can go back a couple years, see myself as I remember, it'll prove I am who I believe I am, and see when I look in the mirror," as she fiddled with first her age, then the time and date.
Mouse hovered over her age, she tried to come with a flaw in her reasoning, but saw none. Clicking her age back a year, then two, she reset it to four. Rolling the calendar back four years, Felicity thought, "If I become this boy, Alan, then I am a weirdo, and I should reset my age to nine and figure out why I wanted to crash a girl's sleep over, as well as figure out who the teenage boy is. If I stay as Felicity, this proves I am, and always have been, a girl," and clicking save, forgetting to shift the awareness to anyone beyond her, she initiated the change.
With a sensation almost as if she was suddenly punched, Felicity pushed away from the computer. Suddenly feeling as she was being squeezed, she gasped out as the world around not only grew bigger, but the office began to rearrange itself. Her body regressing back in age as her mind followed suit, she shrank in size until she was about three, one, whilst her weight dropped to about thirty-two pounds. Leggings fusing with her shirt, they morphed to become a jumpsuit which looked like a black, cotton, one-piece black bib-overalls, whilst her underwear darkened, elongated and soon was a long-sleeve, medium blue, body suit. Kicking her feet back and forth, the girl of four Felicity had regressed back to stared at the computer, which for reasons she couldn't understand, still had the Chronivac on it.
Outside and several blocks away, winging her way back to the Lucy's place, Diana was struck mid-flight by the ripple from the Chronivac as it tried to adjust and accommodate for all the changes it'd been instructed to do, as well as the new set. With a squeak of alarm, she tried to course correct, and ended up ploughing into the branches of a tree. Struggling to get free, alternating between cursing in human and articulating her anger in bat, she was caught up in the changes as the Chronivac's programme tried again to adjust, failed, came close to crashing, and swept her up into the new reality Felicity had unintentionally created. Reading Diana as what she was now, a gold-crowned flying fox, a megabat, the programme relocated her to the Philippines as it tried to work her into the new reality.
Back in the office, which had ceased to be the one at Lucy's house, but was now the one Felicity remembered from her childhood, the little girl looked down at herself. Seeing herself at age four, feeling this settled the matter, as she was a girl, not some boy, she was also relieved when it seemed to purge her mind of the conflicting memories. Cementing her new reality in place, she was about to reuse the computer to make herself nine again when from behind her a stern, male voice called out, "Felicity Melisa Blythe. What have I told you about playing in my office," and before she could register what was happening, daddy lifted her out of the chair.