People seemed to be drifting to the three doors. Most hesitated before choosing one, which I understood. After all, who knew what might be on the other side?
Drifting closer, I noticed that the scenes on the other side of the doors seemed to change whenever a door shut. Great. It seemed like some force wanted to separate everyone. It also seemed that, if left alone, the doors would eventually close themselves.
I waited and watched, trying to see if there was any pattern, if the doors cycled through locations. If they did, there were a hell of a lots locations-- interiors of houses, shops, something which might have been a castle, a moonlit beach, a mid-summer afternoon in a park, a fair or amusement park, a bathroom with grungy urinals, and so on. It didn't look like any of the doors led to any particular type of location, or any door was any better than the others. Drat-- my choice would be, essentially, random.
Sighing, I waited for a bit to let people exit the room, then walked up to the door on the left, and, heart pumping, adrenalin flowing, deodorant failing, cautiously opened it. Peeking through, I saw what looked like a store of one type or another. Maybe a clothing shop, since the aisles seemed to lined with racks with stuff hanging on them. Well, at least it wasn't a torture chamber, or some version of Hell, or... the heck with it. I was stalling.
I drew a fairly shaky breath and stepped through.
'If this is Spells R Us, I am so out of the store as fast as I can run,' I thought. Those stories never seemed to end well.
The door easily swung open. Stepping through, I somehow lost my grip on the door and it gently swung shut behind me.
Dammit! I'd meant to keep the door open until I'd figured out whether I wanted to be here or not! Well, I supposed I could always flee to the parking lot and hope to find a way home from there...
Turning around again, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I found a man standing there.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he apologized. He didn't look like the Old Man from the Spells R Us stories. He wasn't wearing a bathrobe and, if I recalled correctly, the SRU old man was skinny. Although not fat, this guy wasn't skinny, either. Nor was he all that old, maybe just a little older than me. Or, maybe, younger. Ever since puberty I've looked young for my age.
"Take a look around, and if you see anything you like, try it on," he suggested. "I'll be in the back if you need me."
"Uh, thanks," I replied, not exactly articulately. He disappeared through a door into the store's back.
Moving cautiously into the store, I examined the wares hanging on the racks. They were bodysuits-- as in human skins, with the heads lying like rubber masks on shelves next to the body they went with. Along the floor were body parts, presumably to customize the suits with, or maybe, yourself.
'I'm in one of THOSE stories!' I realized. Also this had to be the world of CYOC, or someplace really similar. Although I lack the knowledge to really understand it, I have read serious theories about parallel universes, along with some speculation along the very fringe of science and pseudeo-science. The existence of this place, and probably the other places through the other doors, had to prove that parallel universes were real, and the had to be an almost infinite number of them to have a place so much like a story I'd read on the Internet. Or, someone had found a way to create universes, and happened to be a fan of Changes website. Or, had found a way to create really convincing virtual reality and a way to plunge someone, without their knowledge, into it.
My head hurt. Too much to process at once. I returned my attention to the store.
It was arranged in categories: Male, Female, Animals, Magical, Other.
Although the "Other" and "Magical" categories intrigued me, I felt a little leery of risking them. Plus the human suits were creepy enough. Deciding to start with something a bit more conventional, I headed to the "Male" section, and saw it was subdivided into Age and Age was subdivided into Type.
Glancing into a mirror, I took in my appearance. About 5' 8", fat, but not to the point of morbid obesity-- and my pants were a bit too big for me since I'd lost some weight when I took up bicycling. My brown hair needed trimming. In this lighting my eyes looked greenish, and were squinting due to some cheap-ass Lazik I had done a few years back. Not really too bad for a guy entering middle age.
Entering the Male section I started wandering, looking at the wide selection. Fat and hairy, skinny and hairless, tall, short, Caucasian, Black, Asian-- every description I could think of was there-- although, oddly, they all tended to be good examples of their type. I slowed to a halt in the younger end of the teen section, in a section called "Athlete/Scholar". Athletic kids who got good grades, I guess. One of the suits seemed particularly intriguing to me.
He looked like he might have gone through a recent growth spurt, and was nearly my height (or a few inches shorter-- it was hard to tell with the suit hanging on the rack), and incredibly lean, with developed muscles for someone his age. A narrow face, topped with a mop of reddish-brown hair, hazel eyes. It looked like he hadn't started shaving yet, nor did he have any body hair except a bit in his armpits and a small amount around his dick. I found myself lifting the head/mask off the shelf.
Moving to a mirror, I pulled the mask (if felt sort of like rubber crossed with leather, if that makes any sense) over my head. At first it seemed like a tight squeeze, and I had trouble finding the eye-holes. Wriggling it around, I finally got the thing oriented right, and the whole head slid easily in place.
Blinking, the mask blinked with me-- and, somehow, my vision was now better than 20/20. I felt the face, the cheekbones, the chin-- it all felt like mine. I had trouble finding the seam, but the seam was still there. Rubbing my hands through my hair, I found it was thick and wavy, unlike my stringy and straight hair.
Someone cleared their throat.
"An excellent choice, sir," spoke the shopkeeper, once again I had not heard him approach. "Would you like to try the rest of it on?"
Feeling weird , and excited, at seeing a face other than my own in the mirror I replied with something like "O.K." or "Sure" or some other form of agreement without even thinking about it.
The man went over to the racks and carefully looked through until he found the rest of the bodysuit and directed me to the changing room. I headed into the small changing room while he went to collect some other parts of the suit.
There was no zipper or other seam. I puzzled over this while I stripped. Well, in some of the fiction I'd read, the neck hole would stretch big enough to allow someone to squeeze into the suit. I tried that and it worked.
There was a weird, indescribable sensation as the suit slid over me. I shouldn't have been able to fit into the thing-- its shoulder were too narrow, my waist too wide-- but I did. With a little bit of twisting and wiggling, the suit settled into place, and merged with the head leaving no visible seam.
Looking down, I examined the smooth, hairless chest and abdomen. I could see the muscles jump with every slight movement I made. The chest rose and fell with my breathing. I now had an "outie" belly button, and felt incredibly, unbelievably healthy. I had to find a mirror.
I peeked out of the door. No one was in sight, so I stepped out, nude, and went the the nearby mirror. I got a really hard erection, realizing I was now a young, good looking, athletic guy. It was amazing, and I don't know how long I stood there, examining myself in various poses.
"A very good fit, sir," said the shopkeeping, standing behind and off to one side of me. "In fact it looks perfect. I placed the clothes and other accessories in the changing room for you."
I reddened, even though he had not said anything about my being naked and having an erection. I mumbled a "thank you" and went back into the changing room. A fairly ordinary set of middle school kid's clothes greeted me-- blue jeans with grass stains on the knees, a yellow/gold t-shirt with some sort of academy's name and logo on it, expensive looking athletic shoes, boxer shorts, white socks. A web belt. I dressed quickly.
Exiting, I found the shopkeeper waiting.
"It looks perfect on you," he commented. "You may try it out for free for 48 hours, and then you make make an extended rental, if you desire."
"Can I purchase it?" I asked. Dang it! I was getting another erection, this time for no apparent reason.
"Yes, but we suggest the test drive first," he explained. "There are a few other items."
He handed me a wallet . He had a school i.d. for the same school whose name was on the shirt. The same logo, too. It was some sort of religious voice school. It also told me I was now 14. The wallet also contained an ATM/credit card and more money than I'd come into the store with, and a card certifying me as a lifeguard. A set of keys (no car key was present.) And a cell phone of the most recent type.
"His bike is locked up at the rack near the sports nutrition store," I was informed.
"Uh, I don't know where he-- I-- live," I realized, pocketing the wallet, keys, and phone.
"We also have that covered," replied the man, handing me some sort of blue pill. "Let this dissolve under your tongue, and you will get the memories which go with the suit."
I stuck the pill under my tongue and it started fizzing immediately. I felt his memories flow into me-- the names of his parents, his kid brother, the strict private choir school he attended (hey! I could finally sing! Cool!), all of his swimming skills and interest, etc. It was rather overwhelming. The kids was into, and good at, all sorts of things. It seems I now had a body with a nigh endless supply of energy.
I found myself crossing a blacktop parking lot toward a red, full suspension mountain bike.