Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, a sturdy-looking, stubbled software developer was answering a knock at the door.
The old man outside the flat started with a “Good morning.”
The dev nodded. “Mornin’.” He’d barely awoken.
“Alex Oswald I presume?”
He nodded again. “What’s this about, then?”
“Bod.io. I believe you developed it.”
Alex’s tiredness sobered away immediately. Who’s this and how’s he found me?
Reading the tension, the old man put up his hands. “Don’t worry, I just want to talk.”
“Are you with MI5?”
“No, nothing so official. Just a concerned citizen.”
“How did you get my address?”
The old man paused for a moment. He was about to tell the truth but stopped upon remembering the modern taboo around doxxing. It wasn’t something he entirely understood, but it was a mistake he’d made before. Thus he reached into his pocket and pulled out a lens.
“Try looking at your hand through this. The power that animates your app leaves a kind of residue that’s visible through here.”
Alex took the lens. Sure enough his hand stood out as a pink silhouette against a red background. It piqued his interest but didn’t alleviate his suspicion.
“I’ll accept this points me out, but it doesn’t account for your knowing my name.”
The old man sighed. “Listen, I only want to talk. If all goes well this should be the last you see of me.”
“That’s hardly reassuring, I don’t even know who you are.”
“Try the lens again.”
Looking through, Alex found himself frowning. Where most of the world through the lens was a dark red and Alex’s body was pink, the old man’s silhouette was a bizarre patchwork of colors like you might see through a broken infrared camera.
“If you like,” the old man said, “you could call me an expert in the field. I insist that we discuss, we can do it out here or inside.”
A sharp, chilly breeze convinced Alex to put the visitor on his couch.
“We’ll start off easy,” the old man said. “I suspect you saw something in your sleep?”
The specificity was shocking. “If you already know that, why-”
“I’m curious what form it took.”
“It… uh… I dreamt a giant pink fairy was floating over my bed. And then I woke up and… Listen, I’m not stupid. Fairies are pure folklore and for them to be real it’d have to… there’d… um…”
“It only appeared that way because it found that image in your mind. They don’t have a set appearance so they guess a visual to try to explain themselves.”
“They?”
“In a moment. First, I’m curious if you remember what specifically you told this fairy.”
“Oh, um… Well, at the time I was working on an app. The original idea was to… er, do you know what gender dysphoria means?”
The old man nodded. “New words for an old wish.”
“Well, it’s not exactly… never mind, that’s close enough. The idea was to make it easier for trans people to get some… things they need that can be hard to come by. This just winds up meaning putting some ui design over a bunch of retail apis. What I had was basically a worse version of amazon for a more niche market and the whole thing felt like a dead end in more ways than one. I don’t remember exactly what I told the… fairy… but at the time I was wishing my app could do more than just push pills around. And then, suddenly, it could.”
“Your app is pretty elaborate. Did you have the entire design in mind to hand over?”
“No, after the dream my app changed into something like a weird body-modding chatbot thing. A dumb one too. It took some fighting to get it to not ruin the fit on my clothes. Hell, I once asked it to make me ginger and it decided freckles are part of hair color. The current app is just a system for giving the chatbot instructions that the fool thing will understand. That’s why it only works when you’re connected to the internet.”
Note the fact that this mechanic never came up before now. That’s how connected the world has become.
Alex continued, “At one point I realized that it was capable of changing a little too much, so I gated some stuff off. This worked for a while, but I noticed after the app launched that it was being used in ways I didn’t expect. Maybe it was a failure of imagination on my part but people picked this thing up and used it on themselves like some sort of instant eugenics machine. So I took it off the store and switched to finding people who need it and just giving it to them.”
“A wise choice. Have you ever considered destroying the app altogether?”
“What? No! It’s helping a lot of people, you know. Whether everyone reverted to how they were before the app or stayed the way they were at the moment of deletion, they may be stuck with something they don’t want. That would defeat the whole point of the thing.”
“Perhaps, but-”
“But none. Pause the questions mate, it’s time you told me what you meant by ‘them’ earlier.”
“Nothing special, just more entities like the one you encountered. Sometimes they appear as genies, sometimes as animal parts or water fountains full of pennies. Whatever their audience expects, really. They typically interact with minds instead of matter, just drifting along blindly. But if one happens to sense strong will or desire, there’s a chance they’ll be attracted to it.”
“Okay, but what are they?”
The old man shrugged. “As best as I can tell, they’re just raw power. The same kind of power that builds pyramids or wages war, but disembodied and more versatile. They’re power without direction so when they find direction in some mind they’ll go to it and try to complete themselves.”
“That’s absurd.”
“That’s a word that describes your app, yes?”
“Fair, but pretty much only the app. If an entire class of things like you’re describing exists then I would expect to have heard of more than one.”
“You got an exceptionally big one. Usually they’re small enough to be harmless or at least manageable. If someone wishes for a Ferrari, one may just accidentally crash into their living room if the power is too small to do better. I’m usually able to deal with the more destructive ones. The fact that you think they’re impossible means I’m doing my job well.”
Alex put two and two together. “Are you saying you’re here to deal with my app?”
“Ideally, yes. The magnitude of the power you’ve released on humanity is a bit more than it can handle.”
“But you heard my concern about trapping people in the wrong bodies, right?”
“It’s a fair concern. I’m open to negotiating the best way to do this.”
“But it doesn’t need doing! I’ll agree it’s a lot of power, but I think it’s worth having.”
“I should mention the first person I found with the app was a child.”
Alex sighed heavily. “I see your concern, but even a child can experience-”
“She was transformed into a dog.”
“...a dog?”
“Yes, I found her in a cage at a pet shelter.”
“...right…”
“Naturally she lacked the capacity to change back.”
Alex mulled it over for a minute. “Maybe something does need to be done…”
----------------------------------------
Sam woke up before his phone alarm went off. The sun was peering in through the window. His room glowed in the light, his mind had a dreamless, empty peace.
This only lasted a few minutes, though, as the alarm caught up to him. His phone blared with the voices of all his saved bodies. A cloud passed over the sun, or at least in front of his eyes. He stopped the alarm but the room stayed cold. An open window in his mind was letting in a draft.
Why can’t she just say no? Take a hint, idiot. What do you think “Being friends is fine” means?
The wind blew both ways.
Well it’s not “no”, right? Not explicitly. I’m sitting there and she’s all “close like this?” and that’s supposed to be straightforward?
If you liked her right then friends would be fine. But you’re the kind of person who went and kissed her without a second thought. Whose lips were you using anyway?
Sam shook his head.
I’m a fucking idiot. I’m ruining everything because I can’t accept a “no”.
But she didn’t even seem upset…
Does that even matter?
Without having even realized it, he’d opened the app. He couldn’t think of a word for what he was feeling, so he just searched up a bunch of sliders and set them to neutral. The “update” button shut the window. The wind stopped but the sun stayed behind the cloud.
Sam felt nothing.
And it was an improvement.
At breakfast, Sam’s father looked over the newspaper and noticed that he had a son again.
“Ah, back on my team, eh?”
The father had tried to phrase that in a way which didn’t sound weird, but it sounded worse after it left his mouth. Sam didn’t respond.
“Hey buddy, you doing alright?”
He waited for a response but didn’t get one. Sam finished eating quicker than usual.
“You know, if you ever want to talk about it I’ll be-”
Sam went out the door.
“-here.”
The winds inside were blowing again and this time they threatened to knock something over. Sam pulled out his phone at the bus stop. This time he noticed a new bubble at the top of the app. There was a new change log announcing that there would be no new accounts and that there was a new button to let users permanently halt future updates.
He chuckled bleakly. Too late for that now.
Sam set his mind back to neutral.
The bus ride had enough noise to keep him occupied. Walking to class was a little rough, though. Having spent the last three days as a girl, he felt a little too seen as he walked past people. After adjusting his emotions again, though, he noticed that nobody was actually paying him any attention. It was a relief not needing to worry anymore.
A daytime moon looked in through the classroom window.
“Hey… uh… Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Sam.”
“Well, Sam, no phones in class. I don’t know what Mr. Stoner’s rules were, but as long as I’m here it’s no screens.”
Sam put himself in a pocket and tried to focus on history. It blew by with a blank thoughtlessness that he almost appreciated.
I’m nobody.
He stopped in the hallway between the boys’ and girls’ locker room doors. On one hand, he’d already moved his locker into the girls’ room. On the other hand…
Practicality won out. He loaded a save and shifted a slider. Sam put on her swimsuit. It was the new one she’d bought at…
She reset to neutral, put the phone away, and went to perform as needed.
Cyborg was already out. She liked this new feeling of arriving at places before anyone else.
“Yo Sam, ready to get wet?”
“I guess.”
“Hmm…” She’d heard the tone in Sam’s voice, but decided not to ask. “Hey, you know what I did last Sunday?”
Sam sighed and looked away. “I was there, you know.”
“After that I mean. I got a bike!”
“What?”
“Bicycle! Bicycle!” She was quoting the Queen song. “I’ve gained the power of the wheel, it’s evolution!”
“Oh, nice.” She meant it. Seeing her friend happy helped take her mind off things.
The class itself also made a good distraction. That day they put flippers on their feet, tubes in their mouths, and propelled themselves forward by wiggling like dolphins. The teachers brought out an underwater speaker, so the water was filled with noise.
After class Sam stopped in the hallway outside.
Cyborg turned. “What’s up?”
“Just a moment.”
She put down her backpack, loaded a save, and adjusted a slider. He then picked it back up again. There was a hint of concern on Cyborg’s face.
“I guess that’s one way to dry off. Are you…?”
“Don’t worry, I’m gonna move my locker back to the boys’ room after school.”
That’s not what she’s worried about, Sam.
They ambled down to the cafeteria and took food with seats.
“I assume you saw the new update?”
Sam shrugged. “We got a new button that bricks the app I guess. I don’t really see the point of it. Like, uninstalling is a thing.”
“Maybe it’s a security thing? Like, if you’re worried about someone getting your phone and messing you up, it could fix that.”
“If you’re worried about that then just delete it, right?”
“I'm thinking of doing it. I got what I wanted and the temptation to mess with myself is kinda spooky… Oh!” She pushed her lunch aside. “I just remembered something I noticed!” After getting out her laptop, Cyborg pointed enthusiastically to a file on the screen. “Look, this one’s bigger!”
Sam, who could read numbers, nodded in confused agreement.
“These are the files I was telling you about the other day, the ones that store the body save data. Actually, ‘files’ is the wrong word because these are actually the same file! I transferred the same save off my phone and it came out like this: bigger. You know what that means?”
“I’m guessing ‘you gained weight’ is the wrong answer here.”
“Sam. You and I have both seen this app. That’d only change like one number.”
“Well, I bet it’s got sliders for thigh fat and belly fat and-”
“That’s the point actually: I think the resolution of the save is going up! Both files are downloads of the exact same save, so the fact that the later one is bigger means that it’s using more data to keep track of the same traits. It’s like it’s seeing more, say, faces and needing more details to tell them apart. There’s something almost alive about it! I’m still not sure how to decrypt the files but-”
“Hey guys.” Ben sat beside Sam. A look later he took on some disappointment. “Man, I’d just gotten used to the new you.”
Cyborg saw Sam visibly recoil from the remark. She would’ve broken back in with her topic but Ben got there first.
“You never did say what brought on the change in the first place. I guess whatever it was didn’t work out?”
“I guess so,” Sam sighed. The dark cloud over his head was almost visible on his face. “She…” likes someone else. He took out his phone.
“She… what? Who do you mean?”
A moment later Sam’s face went blank. A sober “I don’t want to talk about it” passed his lips in complete incongruity with his tone a moment ago.
The change raised questions for the other two but there was an uneasiness around the potential answers that kept them from asking.
It made an opening, though, for Cyborg to pivot back to the file thing. She was in the unenviable position of needing to bring Ben up to speed, but she rose to the task and discussion survived.
Before long, lunch was over. Cyborg had her math class after that. Her math teacher was the type who’d have students come up and do problems at the whiteboard. A few days before, when he’d seen Cyborg walk up without crutches, he’d leapt from his seat, held two markers together, and started reciting psalms at her. A moment later he stopped, looked down at his Expo cross, and decided not to explain himself. Trig was usually less eventful.
After class, she encountered a distraught Helen in the hallway asking about
“Sam?” Cyborg shrugged. “It’s not like I know his schedule. Why?”
“Well, the other day… um… Really it’s just that I’ve got something I want to talk to her about. Not super urgent, but I figure sooner would be better.”
Cyborg spent a moment waffling between a “‘Her’ isn’t quite right anymore” and a “Aren’t ‘urgent’ and ‘better sooner’ the same thing?” before a memory kicked in. What she wound up saying was “Sam mentioned needing to do something at h-... a gym locker. After school. So… I’d say look there.”
Helen nodded and continued to class. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to say to Sam, but there was a tension there that she wanted to resolve.
Thoughts rolled around in her head.
Am I leading her on? I thought we’d be on the same page after the movie but…
I kept inviting her to things. Should I have been doing that when I knew…
But it can’t be that bad, right? We’ll just talk it over and then…
They kept rolling away before she could decide how she felt about them. The only thing that felt certain was her destination.
She caught sight of Sam while he was still in the hall. Now, recall that the app tries not to change too much besides the slider it updates. Thus seeing boy-Sam a day after girl-Sam gave a rare instance of an “everything else being equal” type comparison. Helen didn’t dwell on it too much, but it made for a solid confirmation of where her orientation pointed.
“Hey, Sam!”
He turned. As recognition entered his eyes, so did a kind of dread.
“Wait up, I want to talk.”
While she was walking up, he took out his phone. A couple pokes later the tension in his face melted away into a relaxed, blank expression.
“What’s up?” he asked distantly.
“I…” think I’ve been leading you on. “Right. I wanted to apologize.”
He tilted his head. “Hmm? For what?”
“Well, for… you know…” It turned out speaking a thing is harder than thinking it.
While she was floundering, a loud crashing sound stole both of their attention.
“What was that?”
Both heads turned toward the girls’ locker room where the sound had come from. Sam put on a girl’s body and they headed in together.
The office in the locker room had glass walls for panopticon reasons. In this case, though, they made it easier to look in and see the massive mound of flesh lifting Sam’s former coach by the collar.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“I DON’T USE FUCKING ’ROIDS,” Rex was shouting. “YOU GOT THAT?”
His current physique was a better advertisement for the drugs he wasn’t taking than it was an argument that he wasn’t taking them. He’d added height upon height and muscles upon muscles. As he was, someone could’ve said he could lift a bus and everyone else would’ve just said “Yeah, that tracks. Wouldn’t want to be on that bus, though.”
In addition, Sam also noticed the gun in Rex’s hand. He unlocked his phone, handed it to Helen, and began whispering intensely.
“I need to deal with this. If anything happens, just select this save and press ‘update’.”
“What? Why?”
“Don’t worry, it’ll just be like last Saturday.”
Helen, who had actually been conscious during the ride to the hospital, paled.
Sam turned to Rex and raised his voice. “Hey, put her down!”
“Who the fuck are y-” Rex frowned. “Hey, wait a minute…” He put the coach down and turned around.
Rex took a step, closed his eyes, shrank to fit through the door, and grew back into the locker section. Sam stepped back at the sight of it. How’d he do that without touching his phone?
Helen, at this point, noticed the gun in Rex’s hand and realized why Sam was standing in front of her. A sharp jolt ran up her spine when Sam’s phone screen dimmed and she had to tap it to keep the thing awake.
“You. You’re the motherfucker who stole my glory! YOU GOT ME KICKED OUT OF THAT RESTAURANT GOD DAMNIT!”
He held up the gun and pulled the trigger. It quietly reminded him that he had no bullets. Rex then threw the gun.
It collided with Sam’s forehead and sent him staggering back. Helen was tense enough that her flinching at the sudden motion loaded the save. This changed Sam back into a male body. The coach realized impossible things from inside her office.
That was when Rex noticed Helen. He’s the same kind of freak as me and he’s still got a girlfriend? “FUCK YOU!” He picked Sam up by the throat.
“...strength…” Sam gasped out. “...please…”
Helen understood and turned the “strength” slider as far as she could.
Sam broke free. The two squared off for a moment. We can both just make ourselves stronger, Sam thought, so nobody wins here.
He turned to Helen. “Now speed!”
Rex swung a fist at Sam and it struck before Helen hit “update”. The second hit didn’t land, though, as Sam dodged out of the way. Rex shouted, lunged again, and failed again.
Then he turned his sights on Helen and attacked. Sam got there first, though, and scooped her up into a carry. He ran out of the building cradling Helen as he went.
“What the hell is happening?”
“I dunno, this guy just hates me for some reason.”
“Why? He said you stole something from him?”
“I didn’t rob him, I barely know him! Is he still coming?”
She checked. “Yeah.”
They were chased into a park.
“I have an idea. Is my phone still on?”
She nodded and, despite the jostle of running, Sam felt the gesture without looking.
“Great, make my hair long. Don’t ask, just trust me. Now find another slider that says something like- actually first, could you turn down the exhaustion? Thanks. Now find one like ‘hair attached’ or something. Found it? Grab the hair and detach it. Hell yeah, it worked! Now do that a few more times and on my signal, throw it at him.”
Thus Helen created, gathered up, and wound hair around her hand. It definitely felt a bit gross but somehow it wasn’t the weirdest part of the situation. Sam gave the signal and Helen flung a loosely coiled mess of locks directly into Rex’s face. The tangle struck and splattered into a sort of protein net, forcing him to stop and futz with it for a moment. The moment was just enough to duck behind a little restroom building.
Rex recovered and noticed his targets were gone. His first thought was the building since it was obvious. When he checked around the back, they snuck around to the other side. Not finding them there, he checked inside. Giving up on the building, Rex moved on to looking under rocks and behind trees.
Sam put Helen down and sat, exhausted. “Sorry about that, I guess it’s kinda my fault.”
“It’s fine… um… did you know he would throw it? That… uh… gun, I mean.”
“Well, no, but worst case was just I get shot. It doesn’t matter if I die if I have you.”
Guilt. “I…” Her voice was shaking. “Earlier… I said I wanted to apolo-”
“Wait, I think I heard him moving… Looks like he’s not coming over this way now. We need to find a way-”
Helen took his hand. “It’s important.”
“Oh. Okay.” His hand and his attention were a package deal.
“I…” She took a deep breath and started again. “I used you for money at the store and I used you yesterday too and I knew how you felt but now you just…” risked your life for me! The thought was too heavy so she dropped it. “I’ve just been stringing you along like some kind of… of… I dunno, it’s bad and I took advantage of you and I shouldn’t have done that and I’m sorry.”
Having received an apology for actions he didn’t particularly have an issue with, Sam wasn’t sure how to respond. “Huh. Uh… at the store I think I left with more money than I came in with.”
She shook her head. “That’s not the issue. I was treating you like just a thing attached to the app, like some kind of customizable doll instead of, like, a person. And I knew how you felt and I knew I’d be letting you down in the end and… and…” Helen ran out of words.
Hearing this, Sam thought he was feeling too many things. His affections and frustrations colored the edge of his emotion while a kind of confused empathetic pity fought with itself at the core. It was a lot. The situation with Rex, on the other hand, appealed to him in its simplicity. Saving the princess and beating the dragon is much more straightforward than what Helen was presenting to him. The practicality of the issue also gave him an excuse to blunt his feelings away with the app.
The change to bland neutrality was visible on his face and Helen had now seen it twice. She felt a pang of the same uneasiness that Ben and Cyborg had at lunch and it only added to the sense of guilt.
Sam’s monotone voice was a bit calming, though. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that. I’ll need some time to think it over. In the meantime we should deal with this situation.”
“Oh…” Helen, too, gave in to simplicity. “Okay. Do you have any ideas?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. Um… I’ll message Cyborg, maybe she’ll think of something.”
Rex, meanwhile, was scouring along a walkway looking for the other two. He’d enhanced his eyesight to better scan the distant bushes for movement. Unfortunately the guy he collided with wasn’t in the distant bushes.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!”
The guy stood up and started to pass Rex, but the insult of getting walked into was enough motivation to pick this guy up and toss him onto the grass.
It then turned out the guy Rex tossed was the father of a brave little boy.
“Hey, that was mean!”
The kid had had his hand held by an older wheelchair-bound man, but he’d left it to confront the wall of meat.
“When you’re mean you should say you’re sorry!”
Being smaller, the child was easier to pick up and toss into the grass. The father let out an “oof” as the reunion knocked him over again.
This brought forward the grandfather in the wheelchair.
“What in the hell is wrong with you young man?”
Rex was bending over to grab and toss the wheelchair when a serious thought about what he was doing finally managed to gain asylum in his head.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, throwing your weight around like that!”
“But… but…” Rex whined, “they were in the way.”
“On a wide path like this?”
“I-”
“No buts! I bet you think you’re real tough walking around like you own the place and stepping on anyone in your way but you’ve got another thing coming! Back in my day whenever bullies like you came stomping around we’d get together and show ‘em what strength in numbers really means. I see you’re here alone and I can see why because…”
When Cyborg arrived, Rex was still trapped in the lecture. She took off her helmet and dismounted her bike.
“Is that the psycho guy from the hotdog place?”
Sam nodded. “Yup.”
Helen attempted to figure out what Rex’s deal was: “Did… somebody steal a hotdog from him or something?”
“What?”
“Well earlier he said… nevermind.”
Cyborg turned back to Sam. “It looks like it’d be easy to get away while he’s preoccupied. Why’re you still here?”
“He was attacking a teacher earlier.” True. “I figure we should do something to make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.” Also true, but missing important details.
“Not to sound heartless but that’s kinda not our responsibility, right? Just call the police and move on.”
“He’s got that bod.io thing, no shot are they ready to deal with that. I figure we should be able to take his phone and put him to sleep or something.”
“Hmm… okay, I’ve got an idea. Wait here, guys.”
Cyborg made a save, changed her appearance a bit, and then approached Rex, who had just escaped the attempt at moral instruction. The other two watched from behind the restroom as she pulled out her phone, got him to poke it, and then came back. After reverting her appearance, she pulled out a cord.
“Hey Sam, could I see your phone real quick? Like, unlocked… yeah, good.”
Helen made another attempt at getting an explanation but only got as far as “What did you-” before Cyborg put up a hand.
“Alrighty then, I got a save from psycho guy and I’ve transferred it over to here. I figure we transform to get his phone off him and then use that to put him to sleep. Sound good?”
The other two nodded. In Sam’s case he had a vague memory from a bus ride which bolstered the logic of the plan. In Helen’s case she’d largely decided that everything to do with the app was very weird and beyond understanding.
Sam took back his phone and took on Rex’s meat mass. He was expecting the odd light-heavy feeling and the change in his sense of balance. What he wasn’t expecting was his vision to break and give him a headache.
“What the hell?”
He leaned back against the wall and put his hands to his head. His right hand started to cramp up for some reason. The pain only stopped when he closed his eyes and tried to relax.
Helen leaned forward. “Are you okay?”
“Not sure, give me a moment.”
Sam tried opening his right eye. He saw double. His left hand slid down his face and confirmed the other eye was closed.
“What? How?”
He could see a phone screen open to Bod.io. He could also see the two before him, Helen looking concerned and Cyborg with an expression between intrigue and fear. Two images but he was sure he only had one eye open. Closing the right and opening the left resulted in the same double vision.
Then he remembered his experiment with the two right arms. When he tried to grab his phone, the cramp in his right hand recurred.
Fuck, he actually went and did it.
His phone read out the diagnosis he expected: an extra set of eyes and a second right hand somewhere. Sam got rid of both of them to stop the pains. Once he knew he wouldn’t overload his brain, he opened his other eye.
To Cyborg, “I don’t think your plan will work.” He checked the copy of Rex’s pockets. “I think he’s hidden his phone somehow. He’s got extra eyes and an extra hand to use it. Not sure how he can control all that and still function, it’s crazy.”
“Huh. Well, that was my only idea. Guess we’ll have to-”
“How about this. We’ve got a save of a body just as strong as his. I was thinking earlier that I couldn’t beat him in a fight because we’d both just make ourselves stronger, but if there’s two of us then that’s an advantage.”
“Wait, so I’d be in that body too?”
“That is the idea, yes.”
“Ew, no.”
“It’d only be for a bit, just enough to restrain him and knock him out.”
“Helen, back me up on this.”
“Well…” Helen began.
She didn’t need to finish, though, as a distant “QUIT HIDING SO I CAN KILL YOU” emanated from Rex’s direction. Helen wanted to tell them not to turn into him, but now that he’d argued that he needed to be stopped the point felt harder to make.
Thus Cyborg took a save of Sam’s no-extra-eyes-Rex body and the two app users proceeded with the plan.
Rex wandered back toward the restroom building in search of clues he might’ve missed. Sure enough he found, well, something. It could hardly be called a clue, but it was a trail of (duplicated) dollar bills which naturally piqued his interest.
The trail led into a unisex, family, diaper-change type room in between the main facilities. Once he was in, the door shut behind him and two large figures emerged from the shadows.
Oh no, I’ve been ambushed by two gorillas!
Rex’s doppelgangers moved to opposite sides of him. Sam stepped forward and swung a fist toward Rex. Dodging backward, Rex was grabbed by Cyborg from behind, as planned. He felt the one restraining him hesitate (she still wasn’t a huge fan of this plan) and was able to shake her off.
After some scuffle, when Rex and Cyborg separated, Sam swung a fist forward and made contact with a face. Unfortunately, Sam chose the shell that didn’t have a pea under it.
“What was that for?”
“Sorry, just got you two confused.”
“That wouldn’t’ve even knocked me out, it just hurt!”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t tell me you could do it better.”
“Oh? Watch!”
Cyborg ran up to Rex and attempted a neck chop. Rex was not knocked out. It did hurt, though, enough for him to load a save where he wasn’t in pain. This save happened to be one where he still had the gun in his pocket. Feeling it appear there forced his neurons to connect.
Helen saw three Rexs emerge from the restroom. One hopped on a bike, another shouted “run!”, and the third chased the other two while throwing a clown car’s worth of guns from his pocket.
Sam and Cyborg loaded back into their normal bodies and took off.
“I knew that plan was stupid! I’m never using this app again, that was awful.”
“Well, we had to do something, right?”
“SOMEBODY had to do something, but clearly we are not qualified to GO AROUND ATTACKING BAD GUYS! Nuh-uh, never again!”
“Hey guys?” Helen was lagging behind, unaided by either a bike chain or supernatural power. She took a gun to the back, it hurt.
Sam doubled back and ran behind her to block the projectiles.
Cyborg looked over her shoulder and sighed. I guess I’m the only one here with a helmet. She shouted, “Hey idiot, bet you can’t hit me!”
Rex turned his attention to her and threw more guns. Most of them missed, but one hit the frame of her bike and made her wobble.
“What’s wrong, can’t hit a moving target?”
“I did hit, bitch!”
“No you didn’t. If you’re so dumb you’re only copying one at a time, how could you have hit me?”
The realization hit Rex harder than the gun had hit Cyborg’s bike. If the save has more guns then I can make more faster! He began throwing the guns at the ground to build up a supply for copying.
While Rex was distracted, Sam had another idea and pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket. He dialed in reinforcements as quickly as he could. The man on the phone asked Sam where he was and then gave him a spot where they could meet. After hanging up, Sam signaled the other two to follow him and started running.
Rex had been trying to stuff about a dozen guns into his pants at that point, so they had a head start.
The meeting spot was a bus stop.
They arrived and waited for the bus.
The bus did not come immediately.
Sam looked up the street to see if he could see the bus. He could not.
Helen tugged his sleeve. “Did the guy say how far he is out?”
“No,” Sam answered.
“Oh.”
They continued waiting for the bus.
Rex clattered into view from up the park path, trousers stuffed with impotent firearms. Cyborg sighed in exasperation and started toward distracting him again, but Sam stopped her.
“I’ll go,” he said. “He’s after me anyway.”
“You… fine, suit yourself.”
“Text me when the bus arrives and I’ll hurry over.”
Sam made himself sturdier on the walk over to Rex, anticipating more of the obvious attack. Rex stopped walking and took guns in both hands, somewhat unnerved by the fact that he wasn’t chasing anyone anymore.
“Don’t try anything or I’ll bury you!”
“Why?” Sam stopped walking. “Why bother? Why are you attacking me?”
“You just ambushed me!”
“Yeah, because you’re going around attacking people, me included. Why?”
“Wha- I dunno. I was mad, okay?”
“When you were mad in the past, was attacking people your go-to?”
“I was weak, but I’m strong now!”
“But-” Sam wanted to keep talking if only as distraction, but was interrupted when Rex started stoning him with hunks of metal. He curled forward around his phone to protect it. The guns hurt but he knew what to do about pain. True to his word, Rex proceeded to bury him.
He checked his messages. No news on the bus.
Sam sighed and stood, pistols clattering as he moved.
“See? Damage doesn’t mean anything, it’s pointless to fight like this.”
The words seemed to make it through to Rex as he stopped pelting pistols for a moment. Any introspection, though, was cut short by a discontinuity visible on his face. The cause was obvious: Rex had simply used the app to make himself mad again.
Sam tensed as Rex charged at him. He expected the attack to aim for his neck and was ready for that. In actuality, though, it was aimed at the phone.
Rex grabbed Sam’s arm. Realizing Rex’s goal, Sam brought the arm down knocking Rex a bit off balance. This gave just enough leeway to break away. Suddenly sensing the difference in their vulnerability, Sam turned, ran, and went up a tree to evade. Rex gave chase and punched the tree. Leaves shook all around Sam.
“Why are you doing this?”
Rex shouted incoherently from below.
“You know how you made all those guns? You could be doing that but with money. Or medicine or food or anything! You could donate hair to wig makers or help people with their yard work or do anything besides this!
“Shut up and die, I hate you!”
“Why the fuck do you hate me?”
“You don’t get it!” He punched the tree again, this time with more force. “You have too many friends! We’ve got the same app but you’re more popular and the damn thing backfires on me! It isn’t fair!” He made himself larger and punched again. “And then the world sucks too! Everybody’s all ‘too big’ or ‘give me your wallet’! And then you’re out here with some kind of fucking harem!”
“Some kind of what?”
“FUCK YOU!”
When next Rex struck the tree he’d given himself enough power to knock it over. Naturally it fell away from him, increasing the gap between him and Sam. He took one step but then fell over because the app, when it made him stronger, didn’t care much whether his body could function properly.
Sam, on the other hand, had gotten a text during the speech that sent him running back to the bus stop. Luckily it was still stopped when he got there, partially because Cyborg was having a bit of trouble storing her bike on the front.
Walter leaned out and beckoned him in. “Hurry, it looks like you’ve got an elephant after you!”
Sam didn’t even take the chance to look back. He took a seat with the other three.
“Sorry for the wait,” Walter said. “I guess I can’t be so punctual as… never mind. What’s the situation?”
Sam explained.
“So you think he’s got his phone hidden somewhere on his person, but not in, say, a pocket?”
Sam nodded.
“Alright. My bet says he’s got the phone hidden somewhere in his person, near that extra pair of eyes you mentioned, so all we need to do is get it out.” Walter grinned. “Hand over your phone and I’ll tie this up with a little bow.”
----------------------------------------
When Sam woke up he was no longer on the bus. Helen and Cyborg were standing away from Walter, visibly terrified in a way that the imminent threat of Rex hadn’t motivated. This was understandable considering how much blood he had on him.
“Ah good, you’re awake.”
Sam sat up. “What happened?”
“Well, good news first, I got the phone out! Watch this.”
Walter pointed toward a distant Rex who had evidently kept chasing them even after they boarded the bus. With Rex’s phone in hand, he found a slider labeled “running” and turned it down. When he pressed “update” Rex’s legs stopped moving despite the inertia of his top half. Rex fell face first, looked around in confusion, and then resumed pursuit. Walter knocked him over a few more times, laughing as he went.
“Just like you wanted right?” Walter held out Sam’s phone.
Sam took it. The case stank of blood. “I guess.”
“The bad news is that we got kicked off the bus. When I opened you up, you kinda spilled everywhere. I think the driver thought it was some sort of prank because he had us leave there and then. You’ll notice we’re not at a stop.”
“Um,” Sam pointed at Rex, “He’s getting kinda close.”
“Ah, right!”
Walter waited a moment for Rex to approach them and then put him to sleep once he got close. Rex fell once more and didn’t get back up. Walter walked over and loaded the earliest save on Rex’s phone.
“Huh, just a kid. I guess that makes sense.” What’s that he’s got on his arm? Is that scrawl supposed to say something? I wonder how the app treats that, is it the same as clothes? Suppose someone got a tattoo, how would the app…
Cyborg tugged on Sam’s sleeve. He looked over and she nodded away from Walter.
Sam turned back toward Walter. “So, is he…?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, he’s harmless. You said he attacked a teacher at school so there should be footage I can point the police at to prove assault. Just leave him to me.”
“Well, actually-” Sam was about to clarify that the attack happened in a pool changing room so footage is out of the question. He’d felt Cyborg tug on his sleeve again, so he dropped the point and took the exit: “Yeah, all the guns in the park too. I’ll leave him to you.”
“Sounds good.” Walter smiled and waved as they left.
Once they were out of earshot, Cyborg shivered. “Yeesh, something’s off about that guy.”
Helen asked, “Where’d you meet him?”
“I ran into him on the way to the movie. He seemed to know a lot about the app, so I figured he’d be helpful.” Sam remembered Walter’s attempt to get his phone but chose not to bring it up.
Cyborg tilted her head, “What movie?”
“Oh, uh, Helen and I went to a movie last Saturday. I think I mentioned I died that day, it was right before that.”
“I’ve been wondering about that, actually.” Cyborg turned to Helen. “Assuming Sam was unconscious, you must’ve given the death certificate. Was that based on heart beat or what?
Helen thought for a moment. “I think it was that that app said…” It was “she” at the time, but it’s “he” now… “...that app said Sam was not alive. Like there's an ‘alive’ value and it was at zero.”
“Huh, so it’s not heart death or brain death, it’s app death. I wonder if it really knew he was dead. Or rather, at what point are you just letting the app decide what ‘dead’ means?”
Sam shrugged. “It seems to know most things. I’ll take its word for the rest.”
“I guess.” Then she grinned. “It must’ve been a rough movie if it literally killed you.”
“The movie’s innocent, it was a car that did it.”
“Ah, that makes more sense. Did the movie have a name?”
“Umm…” Sam turned to Helen.
“New movie, ‘The Moon is Beautiful’.”
Cyborg looked from Helen to Sam and back. “How’d you go from zero to that?”
Helen blushed.
Sam asked, “Have you seen it?”
“No but the title’s kinda… never mind.”
They reached an intersection. Cyborg decided the other two needed some alone time.
“I’d better be heading home now. My place is this way. See ya!”
She hopped on her bike and sped off. Unfortunately both Helen and Sam knew where her house was so they noticed she’d gone in the wrong direction.
A loaded silence hung in the air between the remaining two. Sam started to say something but stopped short of any words. Then he took out his phone and Helen saw his face drain for a third time. Neutral Sam broke the silence.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, the apology. I enjoyed spending time with you, but I can see why you felt that way about it. You’re a really good person for actually following that feeling. If you like, I thought of something you could do to make it up to me.”
“Sure, anything.”
“Right, well, you know that I like you. I want you to say, explicitly, how you feel about me. I’m guessing I have no chance, but I want to hear it.”
“Sure I can do that. I… hmm…”
“Take your time.”
She stopped and thought for a moment. “That’s really all you want?”
“Yup.”
“Okay…” More thinking. “I know how you feel about me and I’m sure I don’t feel that way. I… know that feeling and… well, I don’t dislike you. The last couple days were fun, we’re friends. It’s just… platonic? The problem is something feels mean about saying that, like I don’t want to hurt you or anything. But you asked so… yeah, I dunno.
“It’s like, I could say I’m not into guys but then you’d pull out that app and stop being a guy. If I say the app is weird, though, and you delete it then that’s the same thing. It scares me when you treat yourself like some kind of non-person thing. That’s off topic though…
“I don’t know you that well so it feels mean to say you ‘have no chance’ or whatever. But… I don’t know where that feeling comes from, but I can tell it isn’t there and I don’t want to give you a false impression. So… for all intents and purposes I guess I would prefer we just be friends. And it’s not that there’s something specific wrong with you or anything, it’s just-”
“That’s enough,” Sam laughed. “That’s all I wanted. That’ll make this a whole lot easier.” Sam got out his phone.
Helen’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“Just trying to find… here it is. See, I just pull this over, press ‘update’, and the crush is cured.”
“Don’t!”
“What?”
“Please don’t use that app like that.”
“But this would solve the problem. It would be better for both of us.”
“Please!” She put her hands together. “Don’t change who you are just because of me!”
Sam stared. The winds in his mind quieted. The clouds parted. Helen shone through bittersweetly.
Her words weren't the sweet nothings he had hoped so long for. Nevertheless Helen had asked something from him. He wished he wanted to turn her down.
“It’s not easy, you know.”
She chuckled. “Oh, I know.”
“Hmm… it’s that blonde girl from yesterday, right?”
Helen looked down and ran one hand over the other. “Still figuring that one out.”
“Sure. Well, if I’m not allowed to take you out of my heart, least I can do is root for you. Go for it, and if another monster shows up I’ll deal with that one just like today.”
“That’s sweet but I don’t think anything like today will happen again.”
They kept talking as they walked. Sam was curious what kind of girls Helen was actually into, but quickly found out she didn’t quite have the words to describe it. She turned the question on him and got an obvious “well, you” answer which momentarily shut down discussion. Then, to lighten the mood, Sam revealed the motivation behind his basketball stint and Helen joked about how that wound up drawing more attention from her friends.
Eventually they went their separate ways. Sam pulled out his phone and lamented that he couldn’t use the app to store his warm feelings. He looked through the sliders, they said he was happy.
What was it she said? I think the phrase “not-person” came up…
I guess I’m not exactly a person anymore. If I die it doesn’t matter. If I turn into someone else it doesn’t matter. If I’m in pain I can just turn it off.
I’m nothing, really.
But I care about her, she won’t let me change that. I guess I care about a lot of people. Even if I don’t matter, they do.
----------------------------------------
Rewinding, Walter smiled and waved as Sam and co left. Once they were out of eyeshot, he turned to the unconscious Rex and grinned.
I guess networking pays off, eh?
The phone had fallen asleep so Walter stooped down and used Rex’s limp fingerprint to unlock it. He took out his flash drive and loaded software to copy the app and keep the phone unlocked.
Actually engage a target and results come in less than a week, amazing! And… I bet I could use this guy as a demonstration.
Inside the app, he adjusted Rex’s features in a way he’d been contemplating for weeks. As intended, the update turned Rex into a pebble that he could fit in his pocket.
Well kid, let’s go make some money!