Turns out rewriting reality has side effects. Who knew?

A palpable silence filled the room for a moment, before Geddy spoke up. “What the fuck am I looking at?”

Roy was surprised by her tone, considering she had gasped dramatically a few seconds ago. “Uh… it’s Sam’s pet dog?”

Sam crossed his arms in front of him and held his chin in his hands, deep in thought, as he looked at his own matching Polaroid in his off hand. In the meantime, Geddy just scoffed at Roy. “Yeah, right, that’s a dog. Great goof Roy. Seriously, what the fuck kind of animal is that?” Her dog ears twitched in curiosity and bemusement to match her words. She tilted her head at the photo, and regarded it a bit closer. “It kinda looks like a wolf with really stumpy legs. Kinda.”

Before Roy could muddy the waters with a response, Sam interjected. “No no, Geddy, I believe he’s right. That, if I may be so presumptuous, is a dog. In fact,” he said, pointing his finger at Roy’s photo dramatically, “THAT IS YOU!!!”

The other two occupants of the room merely stared at Sam in exasperation. Roy rubbed his temples with his forefingers, feeling a headache coming on. “Sam, can you please explain just what the heck your machine did to your dog?”

Geddy looked at Roy with almost the same amount of disdain she currently held for Sam. “If you don’t want a black eye, you’d better not call me his dog, Roy. I’m my own goddamn dog.”

Sam stepped back from them, gesticulating wildly as he began to explain. “You see, when the chronotons from the pocket universe created by the device entered our universe, they rewrote the timeline to account for the changes experienced by Geddy, to better fit her into the new timeline. And, as I calculated, Roy was too close to the device to be affected, thanks to the quantum shielding I installed. In other words, both Geddy and I were affected by the cascade effect, but Roy was not. And that means, in the timeline Roy remembers, YOU,” he shouted, pointing at Geddy, “were nothing more than a simple animal, a PET!”

Geddy burst out laughing at Sam’s display. “That’s the stupidest bullshit I’ve ever heard, Sam! And since I live with you, that’s a high fucking bar!” she exclaimed, once she had composed herself. “For one, we were only using the machine to change my damn hair color!”

Roy nodded along with her. “Yeah, that’s what I remember too.”

Sam suddenly seemed very preoccupied with staring at his own feet, and Roy couldn’t help but notice Geddy eyeing him suspiciously. “Sam, what instructions did you put into your stupid machine?”

Sam kept his eyes away from both of them, but nonetheless responded. “Well… I put in the instructions for changing hair color,” he explained, “but you know… temporal resonance isn’t really an exact science.”

“So… you didn’t know what it was going to do?” Geddy asked incredulously. "It could have done... anything to me!"

Sam sighed. “Accidents happen. Some of SCIENCE's best discoveries have been because of accidents! I mean, we would have never discovered penicillin if Alexander Fleming hadn’t neglected to clean his lab properly!”

Roy couldn’t keep himself from boiling over. “Alexander Fleming didn’t invent a fucking TIME MACHINE, Samuel!” he shouted, as Geddy crossed her arms, also obviously furious with the scientist.

Sam held out his hands, motioning for them both to stop, before one of them did something violent. “Please, please, if we’re going to get through this little... mistake, then we need to explain to Roy what might be different about the timeline! This is the word we’re living in now, so we just have to move forward!” he finished. He handed his photo over to Roy, then backed away quickly, as though afraid of what Roy might do to him. Looking down at it, Roy saw a Polaroid of what was obviously (aside from her ears and tail) a human Geddy, standing in Sam’s backyard. Her hands were on her hips, her head was tilted, and she had a look of annoyance on her face. Apparently, she didn’t like being photographed.

Geddy sighed, causing Roy to look up from the photo at her. “FINE. But I’m still mad as fuck at you.” She turned back to Roy, looking a little upset, but willing to play along for now. “I’m Gwendolyn Haddonfield. Mom and Dad adopted me when I was a pup. Sam’s my brother, he calls me Geddy. He couldn’t pronounce my name when we were little, and it stuck. Also, I’m a dog. Is that good?”

Roy nodded, but decided to probe a little. “Gedd… er, Gwen, in the timeline I remember, dogs were animals. Pets, mostly. You, specifically, were a breed of dog called a Corgi.”

At those words, Gwen seemed to sour a little (as if she wasn't already sour), but nonetheless pressed on. “I am Corgi, at least as far as anyone can prove. I never knew my parents, so I might be mixed, who knows. But, as you can see, I can pass for Corgi, and people usually don’t care enough to dig into it.” She laughed a little. “Dad used to joke that I was probably part Bloodhound, what with how good my sense of smell is,” she finished, tapping on her nose for emphasis.

Roy nodded again. “Right. Why don’t you start by explaining what dogs are. Because you look human to me. Uh, for the most part.”

“Hey, them’s fighting words to some dogs, Roy,” she joked. “Dogs are… um… just another species. Duh. Human, dog… most people don’t care one way or another nowadays. But yeah.” She spent a moment in thought, remembering something. “In our World History class, back in high school, I think Mr. Laramie told us dogs and humans started living together in tribal communities back before the ice age.” She shrugged. “We’ve always been around one another.”

“And… how long have we known each other?” Roy continued.

“Well, we’ve been friends since we were kids, obviously. You and Sam started hanging out back in elementary school, and since he was always bringing you home, I got to know you too.” She looked a little sad at the end of that, suddenly the meaning of her words hitting her. “But… I guess you don’t remember me at all, right?”

As her adorable face fell, alongside her fluffy ears, Roy felt strangely guilty. Even if he didn’t have any control over the situation, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for being a part of this mess. I mean, intellectually, he certainly couldn't turn her back into a dog... er, back into a canine now. But still, he hated to see anyone upset because of him.

Sam coughed, getting their attention, and breaking their little moment together. “Well… if that’s all sorted… I think it’s important we recognize that I am, in fact, a GENIUS! THE DEVICE IS A SUCCESS!”