Sam and Gwen argue, while Roy tries to learn about this new world

At that outburst, Gwen had taken just about as much of her brother as she could. She stomped her way over to him and grabbed him by his shirt collar, bringing his face down to her level. Her voice was level, even, and measured, containing the kind of anger that was just too furious to be shouted. "You will find a way to fix this, you fucking maniac," she said, staring daggers at point blank range, "or I'm going to smack you so hard, you'll have amnesia too."

Roy was surprised by how much fury could be contained in such a small woman. "Uh, Gwen, maybe you should calm down."

Gwen looked back at him, her eyes ablaze. For a moment, it made Roy uncomfortably aware of his own mortality.

He slowly backed himself towards the stairs, not daring to take his eyes off of her. "I'll be in the living room if you need me, then." In a flash, he was up them and back in the comfortably suburban front room. He plopped himself onto the couch, exhaling a deep breath. For a moment, he wondered if this behavior was normal for Geddy... er, Gwen. When she was a dog... well, a canine, she was rambunctious and mischievous, always getting into cupboards and digging under the fence. But she certainly wasn't a violent dog, at least not that Roy could remember. And why the heck did she even look human in the first place? For a moment, he wondered if she had normal human ears under that wild mane of hair, or if the ones on top of her head substituted for a human pair completely. And what was with that tail? Geddy never had a poofy tail, she just had a little stumpy thing that waggled when she was in a good mood. How did any of these changes even make sense?

All these dog thoughts just got Roy's brain tumbling. He pulled out his smartphone, elated to see the Wi-Fi password for Sam's house hadn't changed in this new timeline, and did a quick search on Wikipedia for "dogs". He needed to sate his curiosity, before he said or did something horribly offensive to Geddy, and found himself with a pair of black eyes.

As soon as it loaded, he grimaced at the length of the article, and realized that the broad information contained within wouldn't get anywhere near what he needed to know. He knew that if he was going to take this situation seriously, then he had a lot of reading to do.

*

While Sam spent a good quarter of an hour educating himself, Gwen had calmed down enough for Sam to explain his plan.

"It simple enough, Gwen," Sam explained. "If we put you back into the RTMD, but don't make any changes to your parameters, the cascade effect should easily affect Roy this time, giving him a complete set of memories of this timeline."

Gwen frowned, but nodded her head with his explanation. "That's assuming your stupid machine even works. I wouldn't even have been down here if Roy hadn't agreed to come over." She looked away from him for a moment, still upset he was apparently more concerned with his lab tests than with her. "You promised you'd help me get closer to him, after all. Instead, you just erased every memory he ever had of me!"

Sam adjusted his glasses, offended at her insinuation. "Well, technically, he's never had any memories of you; his memories are from a completely different timeline."

"It's the same damn thing from where I'm standing," she scoffed.

Sam nodded. "I suppose it is. Alright, get in there, and let me prepare the machine for another round."

She opened the door to the booth and stepped in gingerly, being careful to only touch the handset glued to the front. "Just do it quickly before Roy comes back down here. I don't want him to think less of me for getting back into this hunk of junk."

Sam, to his credit, was already at the touchscreen double checking his programmed parameters. "Yes, yes, of course. Close the door now, so I can begin the procedure."

Gwen shook her head violently. "Nononono, I'm not letting you get away with that. If this thing fucks me up somehow, I want to be able to jump out of it as quickly as possible."

Sam shrugged. "I suppose it will work fine regardless. The whole setup is really more for show than anything."

Gwen snorted. "Yeah, it's a really stunning pile of scrap you've got here."

"Thank you," he replied, oblivious to any sarcasm in her voice. "We begin the procedure, NOW!" he shouted dramatically, punching the button with his finger.

The whirring hum started up once again, and a soft glowing light built up in the booth, bathing the room in its luminescence. The light was centered on Gwen, seemingly coming from her very center. The whole process began to pick up intensity, same as before, just in time for Roy to begin his walk down the stairs, his phone still in his hands.

"Hey, what the heck's going on down here?!" he shouted over the rising cacophony, reaching the bottom of the stairs just in time to witness the second test run of the device.