by Maxwell Avoi
Finally Trevor gave Aiko the ten-minutes sign, and Aiko blurred himself back to normal. He went through some more questioning until the cameras stopped.
Aiko sat down, looking exhausted. Ryan came over and sat next to him, pulling a chair around. Trevor did the same on the other side. Ryan looked at Aiko after a long moment of silence and said, “Dude. You’re going to be so rich. Like all the rich.”
Aiko looked at him with a boyish grin that was totally unlike the one that he’d worn as a Caucasian. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Trevor.
“Well the thing is that it technically belongs to the university, and I still have a lot of testing to do with it. This is actually the most that I’ve ever had anything change in such a short amount of time.”
“Yeah, but we have the video now! We can make people understand, make sure that you don’t lose your funding or whatever,” said Ryan.
“What testing? Looked good,” said Trevor.
“Thanks, but I need to know how far down the probability line you can push things. I should probably try to find out how much it changes a person’s mind, too.”
“I thought you said it didn’t change minds,” said Ryan.
Aiko shrugged. “It doesn’t, or it never has, but there are all kinds of things that might happen if you’re not careful. I want to find out what they are.”
“What kind of probabilities are we talking here?” said Ryan.
“Beats me. That’s what I mean, I want to find out. Do they just end with normal humans, or what? Totally need to experiment, but the university won’t let me.”
“Well, Trevor can put the video together and you can show it to the board of directors or whoever, and we’ll get this straightened out.” Ryan sounded pretty confident given what he’d just seen.
“Do you guys want to try it?” said Aiko.
“Fuck no,” said Trevor. Ryan nodded in agreement.
Aiko’s face crumpled a bit and his tone turned pleading. “Please, guys. It would be such a huge help and I can guarantee that it won’t hurt or fuck your heads up or anything. Come on, think about it at least?”
Ryan sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “No promises.”
The next day Ryan called a meeting. The three of them had never been meeting-calling types, but they figured that under special circumstances like these they could make exceptions. They wound up in a back booth of Tony-O’s, a terrible local Italian place.
“We’re not gonna help you with your plan,” said Ryan once they were settled. Aiko’s face fell. Trevor looked surprised; this was the first he’d heard of a definite answer to Aiko’s request.
“That’s because I came up with a better plan,” Ryan continued. They looked up at him, Trevor still bewildered and Aiko with dawning hope.
“What’s the new plan?” he said.
“It’s a simple one, called ‘fuck the university.’ See, I figure you don’t owe them anything, what with them cutting off your funding just when things got going. So what I propose is that we take you and your nanites, make sure they’re safe, and then sell them off to the highest bidder. Or patent them and sell them off to everyone ever.”
Aiko’s new hope died, stillborn. “The university owns all the research, man. They made me sign things.”
Ryan shrugged. “So we don’t tell them. We just go on doing what they expect us to do, and in a few years when we all graduate we cash in.”
Trevor nodded. “Like it,” he said.
“Well I don’t like it,” said Aiko, his voice rising slightly. “We could get into major trouble!”
“So they sue you after you have more money than God and a private island,” said Ryan. “Or we could use that time to figure out how we can pull this off without getting into trouble. And at the same time, we can test the nanites.”
Aiko opened and closed his mouth, looking like a landed fish as he tried to come up with a reasonable objection. Ryan’s plan sounded bad at first but the more that Aiko thought about it the more he liked it. Trevor had obviously made up his mind, grinning and nodding. Finally Aiko threw up his hands and sat back. “So fuck the university, huh?” he said weakly.
“That’s what I like to hear,” said Ryan. “Now how do we get started with the testing?”
It turned out it wasn’t as easy as chugging down a bottle of nanites. Aiko had to take them to the lab several times over the next few days, first to inject the initial nanite colony and then to monitor its growth. Ryan didn’t like the idea of something growing inside him and he often managed to trick himself into thinking that he could feel the microscopic robots moving around. He was able to get over that problem by thinking of rolling around in enormous piles of money, a trick that seemed to work every time. Trevor never said whether he was having the same problem and Aiko was used to the colony he already supported.
Once they’d spread throughout their hosts, the nanites had to be calibrated and then had to do the full-body and –brain scan that would allow them to keep their host’s mind intact during the changes. After that it was a matter of doing searches in different dimensions, accessed through fluctuations in the quantum foam that underlay reality. Neither Ryan nor Trevor had the faintest idea what the hell that meant but Aiko seemed confident. Trevor carefully recorded everything along the way, insisting that he was the chronicler for the group. The other two just shrugged and let him do his thing.
The day finally came, three weeks later, when Aiko pronounced them ready to test. “That’s great,” said Ryan. “How the hell are we gonna do this?”
“I figure we could do some changes on the weekends to test the long-term, and some shorter changes out on the far ends of the probability arcs to see how extreme it gets.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“Look, it’ll be fine. I’m fine, I was fine after I showed you guys, it won’t be a problem!” said Aiko.
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” said Ryan. He worked to project a bravado that he didn’t feel. In truth, he was scared of what Aiko’s nanites might do to him but couldn’t think of a way out without looking like a coward. He pictured a pile of money the size of a 747 and said, “Okay, where do we start?”
Trevor said, “Guess it’s now.” He had the camera on a tripod, aimed at the same area of the lab that Aiko had used in his initial demonstration. He stepped in front of the camera and gestured toward Ryan.
Ryan followed and they both looked at Aiko. Aiko said, “Okay, um…just going to try an easy one first, from a place nearby where from what I can tell we met in a gym while we were learning to box.”
Aiko hit some keys and Ryan immediately knew that something was wrong. This time the entire world buzzed out of focus, the whole lab suddenly becoming the victim of a bad photo-edit, and he couldn’t move. Then, eternity later, it was over and things were back to normal.
Things weren’t back to normal. He felt winded and his eye ached like a son of a bitch. He reached up to touch it and gasped. His arm was much larger than before, corded with hard muscle and a few tattoos that he didn’t remember getting. His tongue touched a space in his teeth that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and in fact all of his teeth felt strange now. His other arm was just like the first, and when he looked down to check he found that his body was as expanded and hard as his arms. His shirt barely held together over his new physique. It was hard to think with his eye aching like it did, swollen to the point where he could only see out of his left one.
He looked up and saw that the others were in similar situations. Trevor had that kind of long, ropy muscle that was so misleading, appearing to be weaker than he was. His lip was swollen and bloody but he wasn’t interested in that; he was staring at his arms and the backs of his hands with a shocked expression. Aiko was still small but his pudge had been replaced by what appeared to be rocks shifting around under his skin. He grinned at the other two.
“Any problems?” he said. It was easy for him to grin; he was used to the altered balance and movement that
came with a different body. Ryan and Trevor moved around like they were very coordinated, athletic drunks. “How long do we stay like this?” said Ryan, visions of hitting the clubs and bars filling his mind.
Aiko shrugged. “Long as we want, I guess. I have some other forms to try out, but if you guys want to go with these I can try something different.”
Trevor said, “Can we come back to these?”
Aiko nodded, and Trevor shrugged. That seemed to be the end of the conversation for him. Ryan said, “Yeah, we can do whatever, then. Just be sure to save these or whatever it is that you do.”
“Lemme guess,” said Aiko. “Clubs.”
Ryan nodded with a grin, and Trevor gave another non-committal shrug.
Aiko rolled his eyes. “Fine. But let me change into something else. It’ll at least give us a different perspective.” He turned back to his computer banks and started sifting through the program while Ryan and Trevor admired themselves. The black eye was a shame but Ryan figured that he could spin some kind of tale of boxing practice that would have the girls coming after him. At least the kind of girls who liked bad boys. He mentioned this to Trevor, who grinned back with his swollen lip. Neither of them noticed when Aiko finally found the form he wanted and hit the button.
“There,” said Aiko, and both of the others turned to look. Aiko’s voice was different, a little higher and with a changed tone. Ryan thought that he knew what Aiko had done before he looked but he had to be sure.
Sure enough, Aiko had changed himself into a girl. She was a cute one, small and delicate and slender with a killer smile and those half-Japanese features. Ryan would have hit on her himself.
“What the fuck?” said Trevor.
“Seriously,” said Ryan, hiding his momentary attraction.
Aiko shrugged. In a better-endowed girl it would have been an occasion for a little bounce, but Aiko’s female form wasn’t particularly curvy. “I figured, why not? Over half the world lives this way anyway, and it’d be good to get another perspective on the clubs and all.”
“Yeah, but as a girl?” said Ryan.
“It’s just a different form, geez.” Aiko rolled her eyes again, looking so much like her usual self for a moment that Ryan had to grin.
“Okay, cutie. So what, you want to come hit the bars with us?”
Aiko took a step and stumbled before righting herself. “Yep, probably going to need you big strong guys to defend me or something.” She stumbled again and scowled at her tiny feet. “And no booze for me.”
Moving around came quickly enough, the boxers having apparently acquired training in movement along the way and Aiko being slender enough that her altered body didn’t interfere that much. Ryan kept glancing at her and trying to imagine what it would be like but each time he just looked away and shook his head to clear it. Soon he was distracted enough that he didn’t worry about Aiko too much anymore. The new bodies went over great at the bars and clubs, and while they weren’t exactly swarmed they were at least admired. For Trevor that level of attention was more than enough for him to work his magic; something about his quiet ways was like catnip to a certain kind of girl, and when the muscles were factored in he turned into Adonis. Ryan didn’t do too badly either, the story about how he and Trevor had wounded each other in boxing practice bringing out the maternal instinct in some of the girls.
Aiko mostly hid behind the two of them, not really willing to flirt with anyone or draw attention to herself. She was aware that she wasn’t taking advantage of the best viewpoint for the female experience, but she had a hard time doing more than giving quick smiles and ducking back to the relative safety of Ryan or Trevor. She was frazzled and exhausted within an hour, cursing herself for not being more assertive even when no one would recognize her.
She turned inward, focusing on her problem and wondering if there was any way to solve it. The feelings of self-loathing and –hatred were all quite familiar, great greenish blobs of emotion that felt like they were going to smother her. Was there some way to use the nanites to get rid of that?
Ryan and Trevor were unaware of their friend’s situation, both of them having a great time with the girls who suddenly found them interesting. When it finally occurred to them to look around for Aiko she was already gone. Both Trevor and Ryan just assumed that Aiko had either gone home or was unraveling the mysteries of being a girl in the bathroom; they shrugged and went back to their adoring fans.
Aiko headed back to the lab. She was determined to find a solution to her problem; after all, a lot of a person’s emotions had a biological base. She reasoned that it would be possible to alter her brain chemistry, just a little, to make it possible for her to have fun at a bar. The idea was a little scary but she figured that if she put a timer on the nanites then there wouldn’t be any chance of her being stuck in whatever form she chose.
Ryan and Trevor went home happy that night, and accompanied: Ryan by one tall blonde and Trevor by two shorter dark chocolate sisters. Their subsequent adventures, though enthusiastic and athletic, are left to the imagination.
Aiko spent the night in the lab after changing back to his regular form. He had to admit that he’d liked being a girl. The differences were enough that he’d been aware of them all night, even though he hadn’t been particularly girly. The thought made him wonder if he was going about his new plan the wrong way: perhaps he shouldn’t been looking for someone like him with more confidence. Perhaps he should simply figure out how to steal that kind of confidence the easy way. It wouldn’t be difficult to find someone who was incredibly attractive on his probability scale and surely a situation like that would allow him to experience heights of self-assurance that he’d never experienced before. He wouldn’t even have to try it as a guy, he realized; he wasn’t telling Ryan or Trevor about this, after all, so there was no reason to limit himself out of fear of their reaction.
Aiko grinned. It might even be fun. He changed his parameters, searching through the dimensions for a body that would allow him to live out what it felt like to be awesome.
A couple of hours later he had it. His dimensional alter ego was utterly different, attractive where he wasn’t and confident where he was shy. He decided that he didn’t want to wait to change; this way he could see what it was like to sleep in a different form and then he could just stay that way for the whole rest of the day before testing things out at the bars. If it didn’t work out then it didn’t, but he was determined to give it a shot.
He worked quickly, loading in the dimensional coordinates and setting the nanites to change him back to normal after thirty-six hours. That would give him a night, a whole day, and a night to follow, he figured. Should be enough time for a test. With trembling fingers, he set the nanites and clicked on what his excited mind thought was the proper button. As the world blurred his hand fell away from the mouse. He didn’t know that he hadn’t clicked on the single-target button.
Ryan woke up before his date did the next morning. Given the circumstances it was a fortunate occurrence but when Ryan looked down at himself to see her arm lying across Ryan’s own breasts, Ryan’s reaction was anything but measured or stealthy. She screamed in a breathy voice, her first cry dying quickly thanks to a lack of oxygen. The second one, recipient of a much fuller inhalation, echoed around the room and down the hall.
Ryan’s date, Mindi with an I, popped awake to find herself facing a beautiful screaming redheaded woman. Her shock was so fierce that she catapulted herself off the bed and landed flat on her face on the floor. Mindi still had the sheets clutched in one hand and she wrapped them around her naked body as she stood. The redhead kept screaming in full-throated terror, backing up against the head of the bed as if she was trying to escape her own breasts.
Mindi’s shock turned to anger in a heartbeat and she strode around the room gathering up her clothes. “I don’t know what kind of freaky shit you and Ryan think I’m into, but you can tell him he won’t see this ass again.”
Mindi slammed
the door as she stormed out in a righteous fury to dress in the living room. The sound of the slam was enough to jolt Ryan out of her panic for a moment. She looked around the room, still breathing fast, and was marginally comforted to find that it was the same one that she’d fallen asleep in. Once she started thinking again she realized that there was only one way that this impossibility could have happened to her.
Anger replaced panic in a breathtaking flash. Obviously, Aiko and Trevor were playing a trick on her. She fumbled for her phone and dropped it when it rang in her hand. She fielded it from the floor, squashing one boob in the process, and she saw Trevor’s name on the display. She slid her finger to answer it, wishing that there was some button that she could savagely mash instead. “What the fuck did you guys do?” she cried. The recognition of the feminine sound of her voice impinged on her consciousness, saw that she was fully occupied in black rage, and quietly filed itself away for future reference.
“Where’s Aiko?” said a woman’s voice on the other end of the phone at the same time. “It’s Trevor.”
Ryan’s brain immediately processed the information and came up with a solution to the discrepancy that caused her mental processes to point due fury. “Aiko’s fucking with us. I knew we shouldn’t have gotten…no, he’s not here. I bet he’s at the lab, waiting for us. Laughing.”
A giggle drifted over the phone from Trevor’s end. It turned out that the sisters that she’d brought home hadn’t shared Mindi’s aversion to finding another beautiful black woman in their bed. In fact they seemed to think that it was a delightful continuation of last night’s adventure, even if she did seem surprised at how amazing she looked. Trevor was having a hard time hanging onto the phone as the girls started to play with her altered body.
“You gotta find him,” said Trevor, which was as far as she was able to get before one of the twins did something that made Trevor turn the phone off and start to make some progress in exploring her new body.
