Later that evening, as Ty was getting ready for bed, there was a knock at his door. He opened it, and Mark was standing there. "Hi, Dad. How did it go?"
Mark was embarrassed. "Um, it went quite well," he said, "except when I just transformed back to human form. I don't know where June is."
Uh-oh, thought Ty, in a panic. "She's gone? Is she still in your computer?" He had no idea what could have gone wrong, but now he was worried that he might have to reconstruct a new copy of her, from the parts saved on his SSD.
"Well, it's strange," Mark said. "As soon as I was human again, and didn't see her, I called out her name. I heard her say, "What can I do for you?", but I can't find her. I guess she could still be in the computer, though I looked and didn't see any new programs.
Well, at least she still exists, thought Ty. And she apparently is still in app form. "Let's go back to your office," he said, and they did. Ty examined the computer, but he didn't find her on it either.
"June?" Ty called, but there was no response. After a moment he said, "But she responded to you?" Mark nodded. "Try calling her again."
"June?" Mark called. A moment later, he said, "She asked what she could do for me, again."
"That's weird," Ty said. "I didn't hear anything. Ask her where she is."
"June, where are you?" Mark asked. After a moment, he said, "She doesn't know."
"Ask her what she sees," Ty suggested.
Mark did, and then said, "She says she can't see anything. June, are you OK?" After a moment, he added, "She says that she's OK, other than feeling scared."
"I'll have to think about this for a moment," Ty said. "I think I'll be able to solve this, though I do have an emergency plan. I have a backup of her, from the laundry machine merging disaster. But since we know she still exists, I don't want to create another June from that. I need to figure out where she is, and how to get her back here."
"What did you and June do before you transformed back?" Ty asked.
Mark turned red. "We, um, did it on the sofa."
"Well, I expected that," Ty said. "But what else did you do?"
Mark replied, "Nothing. After we'd had our fun, I transformed myself back to human form."
Ty thought a bit more. "Aha!" he said. "That's the problem. I transformed June into app form, but as part of your program. Which meant that she was, in a sense, part of you. You transformed yourself back, but that didn't change her. She's still part of you! That's why you can talk to her, and I can't."
"This is some seriously weird shit," Mark said, "but you can fix it, right?"
"There are several ways I could fix it," Ty said, "but I think the best solution is for _you_ to fix it."
"Me? How would I fix it?" Mark asked. "I don't have your powers. I can only transform myself."
"And you can transform June back to human," Ty said. "I gave you that ability in case she wouldn't do it herself on request, when she was merged with both laundry machines. And I gather that you didn't have to do that. But you don't need to do it now, either."
"You've completely lost me," Mark said. "You need to explain, or at least tell me specifically what to do."
"Oh, that's easy," said Ty. "Just tell June to transform herself back to human. Even though she's part of you at the moment, she's in her app form, and she has the power to transform herself back to human from that. Though if there's any problem with that, either you or I can transform her. But please just ask her, first."
Mark said, "June, please transform yourself back to your human form." June instantly appeared in the room.
"Thanks for telling me to do that," June told Mark. "I was scared, and didn't know what needed to be done, but in app form I don't have much free will, so I wouldn't have done anything on my own."
Mark said, "If anyone should be thanked, it's Ty. He figured out what went wrong, and told me what to do."
"What had gone wrong?" June asked. "Everything was fine up until Mark transformed himself back to human form."
"That was the problem," Ty explained. "When I transformed you to app form, but as part of Mark's program, you became part of Mark. I didn't anticipate it, but Mark's transforming back didn't affect you, or at least not much. You were still part of Mark!"
"That's amazing," said June. "Maybe we could even find a use for that in the future. But at least now, if we do it again, I won't get stuck inside Mark with neither of us knowing what's going on, or what to do."
"I'm just glad you're both back, unharmed," said Ty. "And that nothing happened to either of you that would require me to go to extreme measures to solve. I was sure that Mark's transformation wouldn't hurt him. I'm sorry that I didn't plan for yours as well."
"It's OK, Ty," June said. "While I was a bit scared, there was no harm done."
"We're going to go to our bedroom now," Mark said.
"But first, if you don't mind," June said, looking ar Mark, "I'm going to start some laundry."
Ty said goodnight, and went back to his bedroom.