Most of the next day, too, held no surprises for Ty. It was hard to believe that Lisa's grounding was finally drawing to a close. He felt like it had been the longest week of all time.
When Mark got home from work, he asked Ty if they could talk. "Sure, Dad. Do you want to go to my room?"
"Yes, thank you." They went to Ty's room, and sat at his conference table.
"What's on your mind?" Ty asked, thinking that this might be about the car and transformation requests he'd recently made.
"Ty, I'm a bit jealous of how June gets her accounting work done so quickly as a mobile app, and gets such pleasure from it. I'd like to do something similar, but I don't think I can do my work as an app on a phone."
"I'm sure we can figure something out for you," Ty said. "What do you normally need to do your work?"
"About 80% of my routine work is using a CAD program on my work PC," Mark said. Given that he was an architect, Ty wasn't too surprised. "The boss is fine with my doing some of my work from home, and I don't think I'd want you to turn me into something, uh, inside my work PC. Could you maybe transform me into a program on my home PC, and merge me with the CAD program? And then, when I'm done, I'd want to unmerge and transform back to human."
"That all sounds perfectly doable," Ty said. "Does Mom know that you're going to do this?"
"I'll have to tell her the details once we work them out," Mark said, "but I did discuss the general idea with her. She said the same thing I said about the transformations she wanted: as long as you're able to safely transform me to the desired form, and back again, she doesn't mind. She just wants you to keep a close eye on me the first few times, like you have for her."
"OK, Dad," Ty said. "That all sounds fine. We just need to plan a time. I expect you'll probably want to spend a half hour to an hour the first time, to see how it goes. Do you want to try it after dinner tonight?"
"That would be ideal," Mark said. "I can access the work computer first, and transfer some files over to my PC here."
"Alright," said Ty. "Let's confirm it with June at dinner, and if there's no objection, we'll do it after dinner."
"Thanks, Ty!" Mark said. Ty could see that Mark was eager to try it. Mark went into the kitchen, and before long, June called everyone to dinner.
Over dinner, Mark said, "Ty, Dustin, your mother and I have reached a decision regarding Ty's car idea. We're going to let Ty 'get' Dustin a car, on a trial basis, and if it goes well, later we'll let Ty 'get' his own car, too. You can pick what kind of cars you want, but we don't want you getting exotic or high-performance cars, even though Ty undoubtedly could do that. Please pick something practical, that won't stand out too much parked on the street in front of the house. Also, we'll have to make sure that the registration and insurance are taken care of."
"Thank you, Mom, Dad!" Dustin said. "And especially, thank you, Ty!"
"Ty," Mark said, "We haven't forgotten about your request to transform yourself into a car for Lisa to drive, but we haven't reached a decision yet on that. Please be patient with us."
"Sure, that's fine," Ty said. He was pleased that they'd approved him "getting" a car for Dustin, and suspected that they would agree to his transformation idea as well.
"Mom, Mark and I discussed Dad's desire to transform to work faster, like you do as an app," Ty said. "We've got a plan ready to try tonight, if you don't mind."
Ty was surprised that Dustin didn't bat an eye over this, but then, he was already used to his mother transforming into a mobile app or a laundry machine.
"That's fine, Ty," June said. "As long as you can do the transformations safely. And I'd like to observe, if you two don't mind."
Ty said, "This transformation won't be exactly the same as the mobile app, but it's similar, so I'm very confident that there's no danger. And I don't mind your watching if Dad doesn't."
"Dad doesn't mind," Mark said.
It happened to be Dustin's turn to do the dishes, so once they finished eating, Mark, June, and Ty went to Mark's home office.