Enrico Sanwell hated his life. But most of all he hated his name. He didn't even look like an Enrico. At the age of seventeen, he was nearly six feet tall, had pale blond hair and real pale skin. If anything, he looked more like his father, who ran out on them when he was only four, then his mother.
At the moment he's waiting for his cousin, who was supposed to be staying at this hotel. He notes the elevator opening and a little girl with fox tail and ears getting off, thinks, "Lucky," because she is one of the few to be born like this and turns his attention back to scanning the crowds for his cousin.
He's just about to call it quits when he notices the girl approaching him. Before he can say and do anything, she hands him a blackberry and tells him that it could make him happy, but when he's done, he must pass it alone.
Confused about all this, he watches the girl skip into the lobby and disappear. "Odd," he thinks, looking down at the blackberry.
He engages the power and right away a screen comes up for something called a Chronivac. It asks him if he wants a tutorial and he inputs yes. The tutorial only takes ten minutes and by then he thinks this machine is very weird.
Scanning the crowds again, he doesn't see his cousin. Deciding that maybe the idiot had ditched him, Enrico decides to head for home.
At home he can hear mother in the basement doing laundry. Dropping his coat in the closet, he dashes upstairs and into his bedroom. "This thing can alter me, huh?" Enrico thinks. "So what do I want to alter about me?"
He boots up his computer and goes to his favourite Furry site and begins to browse the site, wondering if there is anything new. After a couple of minutes, Enrico has an idea.
Picking up the blackberry, he pulls up his profile and begins to subtle change it. He changes his species to a combination Chihuahua and red fox, his gender and sex to female and the awareness he shifts so that he is only one fourth aware that he was anything other then this animal.
He is confused when the thing asks him for estrus cycle, so he inputs yes and normal. Clicking through it, he begins to look for a timer feature. "I don't want to permanently spend my life in that form," Enrico thinks.
As he is clicking through it, a sudden knock on the door distracts him and he accidentally presses down on one of the button's. All he can think is, "Oh shit," as a wave of pain racks his body and the door to his room begins to open. Terrified, he dives under the bed and shoving his fist into his mouth to stifle a scream, he watches as a pair of shoes belonging to his mother enters.
She drops something on the bed and he can hear loud music. Figuring that she is listening to her Walkman, he shifts about to see if he can ease the pain his body is experiencing.
Before his eyes, his mother's shoes become transparent and then disappear. Above him the bed disappears as well and the room begins to rearrange itself. panicking, he tries to pick up the blackberry before it can disappear to.
This proves futile as he no longer has any fingers, only a reddish tan paw. Whimpering, he bends down and picks it up with his mouth. The victory is short lived as the bedroom finishes changing into a storage room and a wave of fresh pain shoots through his body. Wanting to cry, but unable to because he no longer possess tear ducts, he drops the blackberry and curls up in a fetal position. After a bit, he blacks out.
----
He awakes and the first thing he sees is that it is night. Realizing that his room is now a storage closet, Enrico knows that it wasn't a dream. Picking the blackberry with his snout, he wanted to know what the damage was.
His scent was so much better, but his vision had slightly deteriorated. Quickly finding his way to the bathroom, he breathed a sigh when the sensor tripped and the light turned on. "At least that's still normal," he thought as he set the blackberry down in front of the bathroom.
Inside he noted a water bowel and a dish of mixed dry and moist dog food, which smelled delicious. Moving behind the door, he boosted himself up so that he could gaze into the mirror.
Looking back was a Chihuahua with reddish tan fur, fox ears and semi bushy fox tail. Dropping down, Enrico began to explore and confirmed that he was indeed female. The bad news was that she was in heat and Enrico finally understood the question.
Whimpering, he went and got the blackberry. At first it was difficult to operate without fingers, but with a Q-tip, she managed.
According to her bio, she was the offspring of a fox and a Chihuahua. The bad news of this was the awareness had shifted so Enrico was aware of both his old life and the new one, plus the timer function had never been engaged.
Trying to use the Q-tip to change himself back, he grunted in defeat when he found out this change had somehow been made permanent when he accidentally squeezed the machine. As she lay there, Enrico came up with an idea. Taking a new Q-tip, he began to change info about until it suited her.
It took her about three hours and she was glad she was not interrupted. She'd programed the blackberry so that in three years, that being the lowest she could get the number, she would return to a bipedal humanoid life form. She would still be female, the male option was locked out for some strange reason, but she would be an anthropomorphic fox girl. She would start her life out at the age of four and grow up from there. When she is fifteen, or somewhere about that age, she would come in contact with this program again.
Just to be on the safe side, she went over it again, made any necessary changes and satisfied, Enrico, now Anna Marie, saved and locked her profile. Stretching, she left the blackberry on the floor where it would be found in the morning by her owner, formally her mother.
For right now, she is tired and wants to sleep. And she does, dreaming the dreams that only animals have.