Alright, he can't see her (and be distracted) now. Let's have a friendly chat.

Even with the basement lit back up, Roy didn't have much light behind the machine. He squeezed himself between the cold basement wall and the massive device, as he made his way slowly to the back.

"So, uh, where's the plug? I can't see well back here," he voiced loudly.

"It's around the center," she called back, "you'll run into it no problem."

As he kept moving, he reminded himself to be rational. It would be in his best interest to keep her talking, and to suss out exactly who this new Sam was. He was going to need her help, after all, if he was going to set right the very terrible mistake he had made.

"So Sam, I noticed the touchscreen had a Randomize button," he said, grasping for a topic. Getting her talking certainly wasn't an excuse to have a conversation with what could be the sexiest woman he'd ever be in a room with. No, of course not.

"Yes! I'm quite proud of it the design of the interface," she replied, no hint of sarcasm or irony in her voice. "Variety is the spice of life after all, and if we are to stretch the boundaries of human creativity, we will need that element of randomization to truly find how far this new technology can take us!"

In a way, her mad scientist talk was reassuring to Roy. At the very least, comforted him enough to remind himself that this girl was still Sam. A different Sam, a very different Sam, but a Sam nonetheless.

"I don't think we'll be ready to test it for a while though," she continued, "at least not until I can confirm or deny the basic hypothesis that this technology can affect something as complex as a human being. I considered starting with animal testing, but seeing as I only have the three subjects available, I decided to just try it out on myself."

"Wait, you have animals for testing?" Roy replied, as he found the plug.

"Well, of a sort," she admitted. "I've got Geddy and Neil. And I suppose I could use Alex, so long as Mother didn't find out."

Roy snorted as he pulled out the plug. Geddy was Sam's dog, a Welsh Corgi; Neil was his albino king snake he kept in a terrarium on top of his dresser; and Alex was his mother's old black cat. Now that Roy knew what this machine could do, there was no way he'd let Sam use any of those animals be as test subjects. He didn't feel okay freaking out a dog or a cat to the light show and fog machine, and if they were affected the same way as Sam, that snake would end up as an anaconda!

But then, something else occurred to Roy. Apparently, this Sam had the same pets as Dude Sam, and as far as he could tell, the same personality. So, did this machine just retroactively mess with genetics? Were those weirder options he saw just... bunk?

"I unplugged it," he said as he began to make his way back out, setting that thought aside for the moment. "How long you think until you've got this thing working again?"

"Oh, I could have it running by the end of the day if I needed to," Sam replied, "But I'm going to have to check my calculations to figure out what went wrong first. I don't think we'll be running another test today."

Roy squeezed his way out to see Sam knelt down, already having removed a panel, and elbow deep with in the computer banks at the front of the machine. She was holding a small flashlight in her mouth to light the inside of the machine, and Roy had to remind himself not to stare; while the Sam he knew was pretty dense about anything not relating to science, especially other people, there was no telling how Giant Sexbomb Sam might react to his gawking.

"Well, uh," Roy said eloquently, "I've got the rest of the day free, so uh... if you need any help, I'm... available."

She backed out of the machine, taking the light out of her mouth (forcing Roy to push aside any thoughts he had about her beautiful lips), an expression of surprise and confusion on her face. "You're acting kind of weird, Roy. You've never volunteered your free time without me requesting it of you. Is something the matter?"

"N-No! No, not at all!" he not-so-smoothly responded, "Just trying to help out, you know!"

Her eyes narrowed at him. "Do you... feel okay?"

"I'm... I'm fine." he replied, before reconsidering. With sudden determination, he reached for the phone in his pocket, his mind made up, no matter how little he knew about this Sam. At the very least, she needed to know. "Actually, no, I'm not," he confessed. "Listen, Sam, remember when we did the first experiment today, and you told me to hit Engage with the parameters you had set?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Well, uh, there's a reason I was curious about the randomize button," he continued, searching for the right words. "I might have... pushed it. Before that first test. And then randomized it again, on accident! Uh, during the second test."

Roy held his phone out for her to see, with the picture of the two of them from their graduation. "That guy on the right? That was you, before the first test."