As Jeff shamelessly ogled his 10-year-old sister's newly adult body, there was a sudden power surge in the house. The TV cut out and the lights dimmed.
“That was weird,” said Jamie as the TV came back on.
“Hmm?” said Jeff, hardly noticing the surge.
Little did Jeff know that the power surge had shorted out some circuits in the Chronivac. (If only he had used a surge protector in his room...) The device restarted itself. As part of its recovery mode, it tried to complete the last transformation that had been programmed into it, but the device malfunctioned, inverting its settings. Instead of targeting Jamie, it targeted Jeff. And, instead of making the target's body twice as old as the head, it did the reverse.
As Jeff sat staring at Jamie's thick thighs, he felt a tingle run through his body. Then, he noticed his perspective began to drop in comparison to his sister. Shocked, he looked down at himself to find that his body was shrinking. His feet lifted off the ground as his legs became too short to touch the floor while sitting. All the while his clothes shrank to fit his body, reforming into a style more suited for a young grade-school boy.
Most disturbingly, Jeff felt the boner in his shorts soften and shrink.
“What the hell?” he said.
The changes stopped, and Jeff slid off the couch and onto his smaller feet, leaving the portable emitter resting on the couch. He felt very short now, maybe only four and a half feet tall.
“Are you okay, Jeffy?” his sister asked as she stood up with him, looking down at him with concern. Jeff felt even smaller as he realized that his sister towered over him now by almost a foot.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Look at me!” He gestured towards his body. As he did, he noticed that his hands looked like the hands of a young boy.
“You mean… your little body?” she ventured.
“Yes!”
“Oh,” said Jamie, looking remorseful. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about your height. I just thought that you needed help or something. I know how sensitive you get about your body being so underdeveloped at your age.”
“What?”
Jamie sat down. “I’m sorry, Jeffy,” she said. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes out of shame. “I know I should know better. I’m sorry that I’m so big and I’m so young, still. It must be really annoying for you to see my grown up body when you’re the older one and you have a kid’s body.”
“A what?” said Jeff as he looked at his tiny body. “No freaking way.”
He picked up the portable emitter. A message on its screen read simply, “ERROR.” He shook it and pressed some buttons with his little thumbs, but nothing happened.
“Damn it,” he said. “Work!”
He ran to their parent’s room on his swift boyish legs, leaping up seemingly larger stairs, as his sister cried, “I’m sorry!” again. He looked at himself in his mother’s full-length mirror. From the neck up, he was his normal 16-year-old self. From the neck down, he had the body of an 8-year-old boy.
“I look like a fucking bobble head.”
He ran to his room, stumbling a bit on his short legs. He stood in front of his computer and gasped. A red light was flashing on the Chronivac machine, and a pop up window had appeared on his computer screen. It read:
“WARNING: An unexpected error has occurred that required a sudden restart. Some information may have been lost or corrupted. Chronivac running system diagnostic and attempting data recovery. Attempting to complete final transformations that may have been interrupted. Please wait.”
Under the message an hourglass was spinning.
“Fuck!” said Jeff. He wanted to fix his body now, but he was worried that he might interrupt the Chronivac fixing itself. He watched the spinning hourglass for what felt like a minute, but it just kept spinning.
“Well, hurry up and work already,” he said, losing his patience, stomping one of his little feet. He felt so impotent with this little body, so weak. He wanted his old body back now. Another minute passed, and he put the emitter down by the computer screen and hopped up onto his big computer chair. “Come on!” he moaned, as his feet swung impatiently. He was starting to worry that the Chronivac might be seriously broken and that he might be seriously screwed. He felt an urge to just close the pop up window and try to use the Chronivac right then, just to see if it even worked anymore, but he was worried that rushing things might make the situation even worse.
The hourglass kept spinning and spinning.
What would he do?