Oh no something happened who could have possibly anticipated this

The machine emitted a whirring, humming noise, beginning low and rising in intensity as a white light began to pour out from inside the booth. While Sam was silent inside the machine, Roy couldn't star calm amidst the rising panic in his throat. He rushed to the door and pulled on the handle, only for the glue to snap, leaving him holding the nothing but the re-purposed receiver. He banged on the door with his fist, shouting all the while, "SAM! SAM! WHAT'S GOING ON?!"

But suddenly, the whirring hum stopped, and after a final loud crack from inside the booth, everything was still again. From inside, the door was pushed open, and a mass of white smoke billowed out as a figure emerged from the machine.

"Oh dang," the figure said in a voice unfamiliar to Roy, "I'm still wearing glasses. I guess that means it didn't work."

As the smoke began to clear, Roy gawked at who he was looking at. It was a young woman, probably around the same age as him, standing at what must have been a little over six feet tall, bespectacled, befreckled, with a button nose and with short red hair. Other than her height, she looked relatively normal; she was wearing blue jeans and a black tank top under what was obviously Sam's old lab coat, purchased years ago from a costume shop. Her curves were modest, but respectable, and her breasts probably somewhere near a B-cup; she was the perfect example of the cute girl next door, but a cute girl next door that was the ace of her high school's basketball team.

"Sam?" Roy asked, bewildered. "Is that you?"

The girl looked at Roy like he was crazy. "Of course it is, Roy," she scoffed, completely missing the meaning behind his words. "I'm sorry to have called you out here, only to have another failure in front of us. But, with every failure, we eliminate false hypotheses, and bring ourselves closer to scientific brilliance!" she finished, gesturing with a pointed finger toward the sky.

Roy rubbed his temples. He accidentally turned his best friend into a girl. And left his ridiculous personality intact. It was shaping up to be a long and difficult day. He stopped for a moment, though. It occurred to him, he had hit randomize, and this is all that had changed? Sex, height, and that's it? Well, he had to admit, now that he looked at her, that wasn't all. Her face was much more attractive than Dude Sam had been, but was that because of the randomization, or just because of the sex change? How much did sex change affect the other options? And to that matter, the options themselves were a simple drop down menu! How many choices could Sam have even programmed in the first place? It was all very confusing for Roy, and it wasn't helped by the overwhelming guilt at having possibly fucked up his friend's life. Well, how much had he fucked up Sam's life?

"Sam, humor me for a moment. How long have we known each other?" Roy asked.

Sam strolled to her desk, and began grabbing a few small tools from one of the cabinets there, apparently intent on tinkering. "Well, I think we met in the fifth grade, right? That mean kid, Randy, made fun of me, and you pushed him down into the mud, right?"

Roy nodded. "Yeah, I remember that. He called you a four-eyed retard," Roy continued, cringing at the old bully's words, "and said you had to give him your lunchables."

Sam looked over at Roy confused. "That's not how I remember it. He called me a jacked-up bitch, and said maybe if I ate less I wouldn't be such a huge freak." Despite her words, she didn't appear affected by them, the teasing incident long in the past. Roy tried to look impassive, but his mind was doing flips. How early was this Sam's growth spurt? And how much had things changed?

"Did you ever have problems with bullies after that?"

"Mmm, no, not really. I think a lot of the other kids were too intimidated by my size. I mean, I was like five foot ten by middle school," she explained.

Roy was flabbergasted. If this was the newly merged timeline, or whatever Sam was talking about when he was a dude, then why didn't Sam remember being a man? After all, inside the machine is within five feet of it, right? Well, regardless, he knew he had to fix things.

"Hey Sam, do you think we could try the machine again? Like, for science? We only gave it the one test run, and doesn't, umm, a larger sample size help with testing or whatever?," Roy probed, hoping at a chance to fix things.

Sam smiled. "For Science, you say?" she replied, inserting capitalization, italics, and bold, like the absolute madwoman she was. "I guess you're finally picking up on my genius! And how could I ignore such a request from my humble lab assistant? I'll get back in, and we'll hit it again with the same parameters." She put the screwdriver she was holding down on top of the desk, and made her way back into the booth, this time gently pulling the door close, so as to not cut herself on the edges.

Roy moved quickly to the touchscreen. "Right, same parameters!" he stammered, his voice cracking slightly with the stress. Surprisingly, he saw that the Engage button had changed to "Re-Engage". He gulped, and hoped it wasn't anything that would matter.

As soon as Sam had the door closed, he quickly got to scrolling through the options, but DAMN there were so many of them! He thought of using the search and find function, but he didn't have a tablet and couldn't remember how to do it outside of a PC. He scrolled as fast as he could, but before he could even find a "Gender" or "Sex" or "Male/Female/Other", Sam got impatient.

"HURRY UP!" she called out, less muffled than the time before. Roy, startled, let his finger slip, and of course, tap the Re-Engage button.

"Oh man, I hope that's not gonna be a problem," he muttered to himself.