Tony gave Jeff a push and stepped back in the process. His body was on fire, well not quite on fire but undergoing some kind of change that had him bewildered. He felt as if paralyzed. He tried to move but couldn't take a step or raise his arm and yet he didn't fall, immobile, to the ground. He found himself locked in a posed stance, legs slightly apart, arms at his sides, head slightly raised like he was ready to be photographed or something. Out of the corner of one eye, he could see himself in his mirror. He noted that his penis was back to its normal size and not hte comically oversized phallus Jeff had given him.
If he'd been able to form an expression, Tony probably couldn't have chosen between deeply worried and euphoric. Something indescribable was happening inside him. With each passing second he felt lighter. With each passing second he felt as though gravity had less claim on him. He wondered if he was becoming some sort of science fiction being composed of only light. All his insides felt as though they were now just air.
Then his feelings became only worry as he felt his skin harden. It was becoming a hard plastic shell just a small fraction of an inch thick. And then, Tony felt his body splitting. He somehow sensed his head and neck splitting from his chest and abdomen which split from his hips, which split from his two legs and his arms also split from his chest/abdomen bulb. Tony somehow never lost the ability to see, nor his hearing, smell or touch. Taste was lost to him as his plastic lips were not parted. Out of the corner of his limited range of vision, Tony could see himself in the mirror.
He was a mannequin. And he was not just anatomically correct. He was anatomically precise. He was Tony turned to plastic with all the interior of his body turned to air. Every tiny hair, the lines on his palms, the folds of his foreskin, everything was there in hard plastic.
Jeff laughed. "Dude. This is too perfect. You turn yourself into a model and now you get zapped into being a mannequin"
But before Jeff could gloat any further at Tony's fate, Tony seemed to waver in the air and a moment later was gone. "What the hell?" Jeff shouted. He waved his hand back and forth through the spot where mannequin Tony had stood in his posed stance. But there was nothing there. Jeff lurched back to the desk and frantically scrolled through the chronivac displays to figure out what had happened to Tony.
"Mannequin, check . . forrrrrrrr . . eight days . . memory of previous profile . . restricted to other registered profiles using this chronivac . . let's see . . oh, relocated to the Neiman Marcus menswear section at the store 20 miles away. Shit, I've gotta go see Tony in his natural element"
His abrupt relocation from his bedroom took Tony completely by surprise. One moment he was next to his bed. A split second later he was atop a short, 10 inch high platform next to another, already clothed mannequin in the Dolce & Gabbana area of the Neiman Marcus menswear section.
Two gay men walking by stopped and looked him over. They walked around back of him. Tony heard one giggle delightedly. "Look at the detail!" the other cooed and Tony felt him touch his hard plastic ass. Just as he did, a young man in stylish dress pants and shirt walked hurriedly by carrying an empty cardboard box and some price tags. He did a double take and stopped.
"Wh-where did that one come from?"
"I don't know but you should get a whole lot more like it!" One of the men behind him quipped and Tony heard both of them snicker.
The young man, who was obviously a store clerk or salesman, dropped the items in his hand and inspected Tony. He squinted quizzically as he touched a hand to Tony's leg and felt tiny plastic hairs that were barely visible. He brought his hand near but refrained from touching Tony's frozen in plastic penis and pubic hairs. He touched Tony's nipples and marveled at the accuracy in plastic of Tony's close cropped haircut.
"They never have nipples" he absentmindedly observed. "They never have any of this stuff."
The young man called over his supervisor who was out and proud and examined Tony, hand on chin while answering the young man's questions.
"What do we do with this one? Where did it come from?"
"Helen must have ordered it. I must say it shows better taste than I thought she had. I'd have thought she would order the Joey Buttafuoco model" he sniffed.
"Well, what do we do with it?"
"I can think of some things" interrupted one of the men behind Tony.
The supervisor smiled at him and pondered those things for a few moments.
"No, just dress it like the one next to it"
"With the colors intentionally mismatched, too?"
"Of course!"
With that, Tony felt the slim young man pick him up effortlessly by lifting him at the armpit and he was carried into a back room filled with shirts, pants, suits, racks for clothes and discarded parts of other mannequins. Where the young man put him down, Tony could see detached hip bulbs, detached chest/abdomen bulbs and a score of stray arms and legs.
The young man raised Tony's arms, which could be moved, albeit stiffly, and pulled a tight fitting dark blue shirt onto Tony. He laid Tony down on the carpet and Tony could feel socks being tugged onto his feet but could only see the water stained false ceiling above. Then he felt the young man pull a pair of pants onto him and set him upright in front of a three way mirror. The young man laughed. "I don't think so" he said and patted Tony's crotch. "You're just a little too anatomically correct for D and G's slim silhouette flat fronts." Tony could just glimpse the front of his dark brown pants in the mirror. The bulge really was too conspicuous.
The young man dropped Tony onto his back again and pulled off the pants. Then, to Tony's horror, he pulled off Tony's legs, each one detaching from his hip bulb with a deep bass sort of pop sound. Tony could still feel his legs, one resting against his left arm and the other tossed to the side on the carpet.
Tony's mind raced with nightmare possibilities of being casually dismembered and being stuck like that. Then it got worse. The young man pulled off Tony's hip bulb, consisting of just his buns in the back and the lowest portion of his abdomen including his genitals and going about halfway to his navel in the front. "Won't be needing this" the young man said as he tossed Tony's hips off into the pile of discarded mannequin parts.
Tony was now in shock. Almost half his body had been split apart from him and he could still somehow feel those parts. "Jesus! All of this because Jeff had to go and play games with my dick! My own johnson wouldn't have been on the keyboard like that! Now! Now . . this "
While he reproached Jeff and himself in his shock, the young man casually retrieved another hip block from the pile of discarded parts. He jokingly held it out in front of Tony. It was no less wide than Tony but with flat little buns, barely split at all and a small bulge at the crotch the size of an egg split lengthwise. "You're new equipment, my man. Guys who're hung don't wear D and G" he chuckled. With that, Tony felt him push his new hip section into place with a pop.
No!
Then the young man reattached Tony's own legs and pulled the brown pants on him and set him upright. He adjusted the blue shirt and then satisfied with that, pulled a couple of oddly pointy square toed shoes onto Tony's feet. He carried Tony by one belt loop of his pants now and returned him to the display where Tony had first materialized in the store. The supervisor inspected him and noted with surprise how well Tony fit into D & G's flat fronts. The young man laughed and unzipped the front of Tony's pants to reveal the extremely modest anatomically incorrect bulge. They shared a laugh.
Tony's mood remained bleak. In a short time, the store closed. He was alone in the semi-dark, unable to move, part of his body not even his own. He found that even sleep was not possible to him. Somehow, he did not feel fatigue. He tortured himself hour after hour running through his head every possible thing that could happen.
What if this profile is set that nobody remembers I existed? No, wait, we set it so that the five of us always remember each other. What if they try to change me back and I die because I have no hips? What if they change me back and I end up with this unibuttock ass and don't have a penis any more? What if they can't change me back because I'm not all here? He could feel the coarse rug against his plastic penis and something metal against his plastic buns back in the storeroom 50 feet away.
The next day, Tony watched the sun rise and later the store open. Late in the morning, his spirits leaped when he saw Jeff, Jack, Eric and Mark enter the store. From his position at the far end, he could see them walking in front of every display, looking at every mannequin. Finally, almost last of all the possible ones, they approached Tony.
"Hey bro!" Mark whispered as the others nodded greetings. Jeff, too, looked very sympathetic, now, and he was carrying his laptop. They all circled Tony and inspected him. In his mind Tony was shouting. "That's not my ass! Come on guys! Look at that weak behind! That's not me"
But the only immediate response from his brother and friend was Jack sidling up next to him and mumbing "Brown and blue? Jesus Christ, guy, I wouldn't have put that outfit together when I was a little kid"
As Tony watched, a very simple plan unfolded. Jeff and Eric, both much too large to wear the pants on him, found the other similar sized pairs of the same pants and took them halfway across the store and hid them behind another display. Meanwhile, Jack and Mark both expressed interest in buying a pair like the mannequin wore. The same young man who'd dressed Tony was the one to try and help them. He was taken aback by how much Mark resembled the larger mannequin. Tony thought it was a mistake to have brought Mark along. The resemblance was just too much. Jack and Mark had to ask two more times for the same pants as on the mannequin before the clerk could take his eyes off the resemblance between Mark and Tony the mannequin. He looked through the racks for those same pants in the 31 inch waist that Jack requested but couldn't find any. Tony saw him reaching around behind him.
"Oh, these are 31's. I-I could've sworn we had some more pairs in sizes like that" the clerk added, looking around just as Jeff and Eric returned with a bag. Jeff had bought the cheapest (still dramatically overpriced) pair of 31 inch waist relaxed fit jeans and a t shirt. He pulled each out of the bag and showed Tony. He handed the bag to Eric and powered up his laptop.
Reluctantly, the clerk agreed to take the pair off the store mannequin and, again, effortlessly picked up Tony and carried him along to the storeroom. Jeff was undecided on how to play it. He could zap the clerk right there, but it would look funny for 4 guys to sort of disappear into the storeroom with the clerk and the clerk not emerge immediately. He thought another clerk was watching them, too. He nudged Jack and nodded his head toward the changing rooms.
He again saw another clerk watching them, perhaps worried about theft from the storeroom and gestured for Eric and Mark to remain with him by the display stand outside the open storeroom door. In just a few seconds, the clerk had pulled the pants off Tony and was over at the changing rooms with Jack. Jack did everything possible to keep the clerk there. He asked when these pants had come in, was there any prospect of an upcoming sale and quickly changed into them. Despite Jack's modest rear and average penis, they were tight around his hips. He had the clerk stand with him by the mirror and actually asked if he thought they made him look fat.
Meanwhile, Jeff, Eric and Mark were standing by the empty shelves of an unused display trying to look bored while Jeff frantically typed away at the laptop to call up Tony's profile. He pulled the emitter out from inside his jacket, laid it down on the counter and pointed it toward the open storeroom doorway where Tony's legs were visible. He typed to change Tony back.
The emitter read, "Error, only partial restoration possible. Safety protocol initiated."
Just then the supervisor tapped Jeff on the shoulder. "Excuse me but may I ask what you are doing." Other personnel including security guards gathered around and Jeff knew he was caught.
Jack tried to warn Jeff but before he had left the dressing room, he heard Tony moan. He turned around to see Tony moving. Tony was still a plastic mannequin but he was moving.
Jeff and all his friends were rounded up for questioning. The supervisor whose name was Reggie said, "Stealing a mannequin is a big crime. It might even be a felony if the mannequin is valuable enough and that mannequin is expensive."
Jeff said, "That mannequin is our friend Tony. We didn't want to reveal this but we have a device that can transform people and we accidentally transformed Tony into a mannequin."
Reggie said, "Bullshit. You can't even tell a good lie. I wondered about the mannequin so I did some research. Helen did indeed order that mannequin. I have the order slip right here. I don't know why she ordered such a detailed mannequin. I'll ask her when she gets in later today. But we paid a hefty price for that mannequin and you tried to steal it."
The Chronivac had altered reality a little bit to make it seem like Tony had always been a mannequin.
Jeff asked, "If that is just a mannequin, how is it moving."
"I don't know how you managed to get it to move." Said Reggie, "I imagine you do have some kind of device you slipped in the mannequin to make it move but there's no way that is a human."
Jeff turned to Tony, "Tell him."
Tony stiffly opened his mouth and tried to speak. The stiffness of his plastic mouth made him mumble. "Muh-I am mu-Tony. Muh-I hu-am h-a hu-man-uh-can I gu-o hu-ome?"
Reggie was stunned but the Chronivac prevented him from being able to wrap his mind around this situation. "Alright, you've convinced me that Tony is your friend and not just a mannequin but we still bought him and own him. Tony, if you leave, you will be charged with theft, stealing yourself from this store and if any of your friends take you they will also be charged with theft. Now get back to your display window."
Tony went back to standing in the window. Jeff and his friends left trying to think of another way to get Tony out of there. Meanwhile, Reggie went to where he had stashed Tony's real crotch. It too could move around and Reggie thought it was a great toy. He planned to borrow it and take it home for some fun.