SLAM!
"Hey, m'man, what're you up to?"
That was Dan, one of Sean's roommates. Sean swiveled around in the computer chair and saw that Dan's eyes were unfocused and he was swaying back a forth a
little.
"You 'n Jay have a good time?" he asked.
"Yup. Hot chicks and cold beer. Great night. Got some new phone numbers, too, somewhere," Dan answered, fishing in his pockets for the slips of paper, which
caused him to almost lose his balance.
Jay came in from the kitchen, also clearly on the far side of sobriety.
"Whazzat, some new game?" he asked, pointing to the computer screen.
"Um, yeah. It's brand new," Sean began, "I fact, I just finished entering my stats - see? And one great thing about it is that it has this interactive thingy that can pull
out your stats just by having you touch it and waiting for the scan. Wanna try?"
Neither of them was entirely processing the information, so Sean shoved the connected handheld unit at the closest one, Dan.
BEEP. The computer screen flashed, went blank, then a new screen came up with the fields filled in. "See?" Sean asked, carefully typing in 'Dan' in the box on top.
"Lemme try," Jay said, and the same procedure followed. "Now what. Like, where's the game screen?"
"Um, I've got some more loading and testing to do. We can play tomorrow, now that all the info is there. Thanks, by the way," Sean responded.
"Whatever," Dan said. "Gotta whiz." And he headed off to the bathroom.
Jay plopped down on the couch and flicked on the TV.
Sean was nervous, but thought he could get away unnoticed with a few quick changes.
He pulled up Jay's stats. Weight: 190. He quickly erased that and typed in 375, hit 'Enter' and pointed the handheld at the back of Jay's head. Jay tried to swat the
non-existent bug he thought had landed on his neck.
For Dan, Sean moved to a different change. "Hmm, let's see - height, weight, age? Nah, too easy. Ah - yes," he thought to himself, changing a 138 to a 55. "That
should be interesting. C'mon, Dan, c'mon."
Both changes had been entered with a 3-hour time frame for occurrence, and an awareness rating of none, so they each wouldn't notice what was happening.
Dan re-entered, screatching himself and yawning. He stood behind the couch, leaning on the back of it for support, to see what Jay was watching. He barely
noticed the crackling tingle that accompanied Sean's zap.
Dan was one of those guys who never seemed to need to study - it all came easily to him. Sean was curious to see how he'd be with an I.Q. of 55!
"Man, that beer really filled me up. Can't get comfortable," Jay volunteered, letting out a great dep belch, then unbutttoning his jeans, which had started to pinch.