I scroll through the options, the "age" option catches my eye. I change it from 18 to 12, then after a second, lower it further to 8. If I'm turning her into a kid, I might as well go all the way. I check the description to make sure this it's what I want, "Changes the usb friend's physical age, not their mental age. To change the mental age, check the "mental" tab." That sounded good to me, so I looked over to the T-pose screen to see what looked like a full blown tiger cub. The model want even standing up, it was on all fours like a regular tiger. There was also 3 red pop-ups on the screen. I decided to deal with them in order. The first one read, "These changes will cause your usb friend to lose the ability to speak, to override this, manually change the 'can speak' attribute to yes." I start to do that, when Ava asks, "What's taking so long?" "Off you must know," I reply, "I'm dealing with the program wanting to make it so you can't speak. That and a few other things." "How are you changing me that that's an issue?" She asks. "Well, it's a surprise, but I can tell you that I didn't expect this to happen." I reply. "Alright" she said.
I check the next pop-up, "The position of the switch to transfer your usb friend to usb mode well shift slightly, click here to see where the switch will now be located." Clicking on the pop-up, an animation started playing which showed fingers pinching beneath the tigers armpits, then flipping a switch on it's stomach. That was pretty self explanatory, so I moved on to the third pop-up, "This change may leave your usb friend extremely small, it is recommended that you change "size" to at least 1/8 of normal size from the current setting of 1/32 of normal size." I click on the ruler button and the image of the the tiger cub zooms out and a hand is added to the image. The model of the cub ends up being about half the size of a fingernail on the hand. Yea that want going to do. I went and found the size attribute, then I changed it until the model was a bit smaller than the hand, at that point it was at 1/4 the normal size. I save the setting as "tiger cub", then turn to Ava.
"I think that's good now, you ready Ava?" I ask. "Yep," Ava responds, "let's see what you're going to surprise me with." I click apply. "Whoa," Ava says as she gets slightly smaller, "are you shrinking me again? Because I thought I was small enough." "Not quite, you'll see." I respond grinning. As she gets smaller, her face gets chubbier adds she stumbles a bit as she sheds her clothes and heads to the mirror. "You had to leave me naked again?" She growls at me. Before I can respond she trips, then tries to get up and trips again. "Try walking on all fours." I advise. "What did you do, turn more into a full tiger?" She asks. "I just made you younger, I guess half-tiger people take longer to mature." I say. I start to place furniture in off places around the room. "What are doing?" Asked Ava. "Try jumping around, have fun." I tell her. It takes her a while to her used to walking with for feet, but she 10 minutes, she's pouncing around like a natural. "It says you have about an hour and a half worth of charge, I think I'm going to try to take you back into the real world, ok?" I ask. "Alright", she replied. I closed the program, then reached for the flash drive. Before taking it though, I paused and copied the files from the drive and saved them as: "Ava backup tiger cub". I then pulled it out and flipped the switch, watching as it expanded into a tiger cub about the size of my hand. "That was weird," Ava said as she got up and stretched, "but I guess it worked, hey wait I'm bigger now!" "Yea," I say as I pick her up, "the computer told me it was doing that, I wonder if I can do that manually." Yea, I lied, but I was having fun with her as small as she was. "Anyway, we have an hour and a half before I have to plug you back in, what duo you want to do?" "For now I just want to play around." She responded, "it's fun being a cat." "Alright," I said, placing her on the floor. "Knock yourself out."
I watched her play around for a good half hour before getting bored. I decided to pull up the program based on the backup I made of Ava. Rather than running the simulation immediately, I decided to put Ava back to her regular age. Putting her clothes back on her, I call to the cub Ava, "Ava, come here, I have something to show you." "Alright! She says as she bounds over to me. I scoop her up but cover her eyes. "Hey!" She says. "It's a surprise." I reply as I rub her back. "Alright," she says begrudgingly. After a few seconds she starts purring. I smile, my mission accomplished. "Your purring," she immediately goes quiet, "but the surprise it's ready." I say add I put here on the table and unpause the Ava in the computer. "How'd I get changed back?" The Ava in the computer asked, "I thought you were going to... Wait it's that me?" At the same time, the cub Ava says, "Whoa, that's cool." What follows is an awkward and stilted conversation which I decide to leave as quickly as possible. "I'm going to go make lunch guys." I say. "Ok" they both respond, before giggling.
After making myself lunch, I come back with a small plate for cub Ava, only to find that she's passed out. "She fell asleep a few minutes ago." The Ava on the computer says. "Oh, I guess she needs to charge." I say, picking her up. "Here, want to see?" I ask computer Ava, holding up the cub as I press below her armpits and flip the switch. "Weird" Ava says as the cub Ava shrinks into a flash drive. I'm reaching to plug the flash drive in when my computer makes a dinging sound. I look at the screen to see a pop-up: "You usb friend is worried about something." I turn to Ava, who now that I think about it looks upset, though she doing a good job at hiding it. "Alright, spill." I say to her. "What?" She asks surprised. "You were happy all morning, and now all of a sudden, the computer says your worrying about something, what's the problem?" I say. She looks down at the ground and softly whispers, "What will happen too me?" "What?" I say, "we already talked about this, we'll figure out what's happening to you and fix it! Until then, we have the ground hog day wish you made do we don't have to worry about anything until that." "No," she says, looking closer to tears, "what will happen to me. I'm not the real me, your holding the flash drive she is in your hand. As weird as that is, she's still the original, what are you going to do to me? Just delete me from existence? What are you going to do?" At this point she was full on crying. I guess with good reason... But still... I really didn't have an answer so, setting as she's liking at the ground, I paused the simulation to give me time to think. I contemplated just closing the simulation, but I just couldn't do that. Even if one version off Ava lived on, I would still be killing another. I clicked through the menus, at a loss, until I saw a button labelled "release". Hovering over it, it read: "Modifies the operating system of the computer so as to give the usb friend full access and control. The usb friend will experience the computer by being digitally placed into it, interacting with the computer as if it's a physical world. They can still be modified via this software." That's perfect! I thought to myself. I unpaused Ava and told her, "Ava, I wasn't thinking when I did this but your right, I can't delete you. I have an idea though." "What?" She asked. "Find the part of the manual that details 'release' and tell me what you think about that."
Ava scrambled for the manual and quickly flipped through it. "I.. thank you..." She said, "that sounds good..." "Alright then!" I say, before pausing "actually, I have a question. Would you mind if I change the color of your fur." "Uhh, sure.. why?" She asked. "I don't want to confuse you two." For a second, she looked like she was going to cry again and I kicked myself mentally, losing your entire identity can't be ready, and I just reminded her of it. "Ok." She sighed. And I mentally sighed along with her. I hoped through the menus and changed the colors of her for from Orange and black to white and black. I didn't click apply yet though. In my head, I was debating changing things in the mental tab. On one hand, it would let her cope better, on the other, it just felt, well, wrong... In the end, I decided to change a few settings, but nothing to drastic. I first raised myself up to her favorite person in that setting. Then I flipped through and found a setting labelled "emotional adaptability". I raised that significantly. I also decided that since I had essentially ruined her life, I should make it up to her somehow, so I found an attribute labelled "overall intelligence" which had a warning under it indicating it would change a bunch of stats, and I bumped that up significantly. Scrolling through I also found "eidetic (photographic) memory" and checked that. It recommended I turn on "able to forget" on order to, "prevent emotional trauma". I had no clue what that meant but it sounded bad so I listened to it. Lastly, I switched her sexuality to asexual. I debated that one for a while, but I decided to do it anyway. It would just be cruel if she fell in love while trapped in a computer. After all that, I clicked apply.
Ava somehow didn't notice how long I was taking, so I asked her if she was ready. "Yea.. As ready as I'll ever be." She said, liking down at herself. "I... I like the new fur color." She said, "Also, thank you for... For... Well you know..." "No problem." I said, "your my best friend, I'll protect you in any incarnation you end up in. Also, glad you like the fur color, I think it suits you." "Thanks" she said, showing a slight smile. "Alright, let's do this." I say, clicking on the 'release' button. Immediately a prompt came up saying: "Warning: Your usb friend will have full access to your computer, are you sure you want to do this?" I click yes and another prompt comes up: "When your usb friend accesses this program, they will enter the room. They will be unable to access other parts of this program. You may choose to allow your usb friend to edit and expand their room in wacky way they see fit. They will not be able to edit the rooms of other usb friends. Would you like to allow your usb friend to do this?" Again, I click yes. Another prompt comes up, "Are there any programs you would like to restrict your usb friend from accessing?" I click no. "If you use a different web connected computer, would you like to allow your usb friend to visit you?" I think for a second, then click yes. A pop-up reads, "Final Notes: After closing this pop-up, your computer will restart. You can change these settings at any time by clicking 'release' in this program again. The files pertaining to this instance of your usb friend will be moved. To access this program as pertains to your usb friend. Right click at any time, then click 'usb friend'. Please note that to avoid corruption, your usb friend will still need to sleep." I hover over ok, then tell Ava, "See you in a second." Then I clicked ok.
The computer went black, as expected, then shouted the Windows logo. I tap my fingers impatiently as it finishes booting up. I log in and I'm greeted by Ava smiling at me. "It worked!" She's only about 3 icons tall on screen but she's still quite loud, I reach to turn down the speakers. "Oh, oops, wait, sorry" Ava apologizes. "I just couldn't quite believe that it would work, though I guess its no stranger than anything else." "Yea", I say grinning, I was worried that Ava would be mad at me. To be honest, she really should bee mad at me. But she's not! Ava runs over to the web browser and touches it before disappearing. "Where'd you go? I ask "I'm right here" she says. I double click on the web browser only to see Ava in the window, trying to figure out how to use Google. "Maybe try talking to it." I say. "I don't think that will work, nevermind." She says, and it fills in on Google. While she's surfing the web, I pull up a paint program and draw a platform. I put the cursor over her and drag her onto the platform. "Hey! Why'd you do that?" She complains. "I wanted to see if I could" I say truthfully. "Anyway, you should brew able to access a room that you can control, try setting off you can figure out how. "I don't see how.. Oh that's how." Says Ava as she sidesteps out of existence. I right click and open the program. She's just sitting on the couch. "So what will you do now?" I ask, "you have free reign of the computer, but I can't be here all the time." "I was thinking first of all, I'd help you try to find out how to fix the other Ava. After that, I don't know. I've always liked video games so maybe I'll pay a bunch off those. Maybe I'll learn programming later. I'll find something." We look at each other for a few moments, "I'm just glad your happy" I say. "Yea me too" she replied, smiling. We stay like that for a few seconds, then she says, "that's the flash drive that's Ava right?" "Yea?" I respond. "Charge her! Don't leave her like that!" She tells, laughing at the same time. "Oh yeah sorry.." I say, and plug her in.
We sit there a bit longer before Ava gets bored and says, "I'm going to go...."