Test 2: Playing it Safe

The amount of power I held in my hand... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to really push the limits of what I could change of Rebecca. As much as I might have wanted to give her a curvier figure or legs for days, Rebecca didn't deserve that. She'd been nothing but kind to me so far and I wanted to repay the kindness back. So, with little fanfare or deliberation, I navigated to the Eyes menu and moved the slider for Eyesight from Poor to Normal. I looked at her excited face, smiled to soothe any nerves she might have, and hit Apply.

"Woah, what the-" Rebecca said, blinking her eyes in confusion. "Why am I having a hard time... seeing?"

I chuckled at her obliviousness before helping her out. "Try taking off your big spectacles."

Even more confused, Rebecca followed my instructions and slowly removed her oversized spectacles. Then she gasped. It was quiet for a moment, neither of us really knowing what to say. Rebecca was looking at the now useless glasses in her hand in disbelief and I wasn't sure what was going on in her head. Then, her eyes filled with tears that quickly overflowed and ran in streaks down her cheeks. Crap, I'd screwed things up yet again.

"Oh no, Rebecca, I'm sorry.. This was supposed to help you out not-"

She interrupted my apology by briskly running over and giving me a big hug. Unlike the first hug that had been fast and awkward, this one felt sincere and warm. I returned the hug this time, and let rest her head on my shoulder while the tears of joy ran down her face. We stood in that embrace for what felt like minutes. I'll be honest with you, I hadn't had a relationship with someone in several years at this point in my life. I didn't think it was really necessary after my last break-up, you know? But that hug... that hug changed things. I hadn't realized how lonely I really was and having her arms wrapped around me, her face buried in my shoulder as she quietly tried to compose herself, it opened my eyes to something I hadn't realized I needed. I won't lie, my eyes teared up as well, both in sympathy for Rebecca and in recognizing the feelings of my own I'd been ignoring.

After a moment, Rebecca cleared her throat and stepped back wiping the remaining tears from her face. "It's funny, I haven't had good eyesight since I was 3." She looked at the glasses in her hand, lost in thought. "I've worn glasses for as long as I can remember and, honestly, I'd kind of forgotten what it was like to see clearly. Till now, that is."

I laughed, hiding the small tears in my own eyes. "You're telling me you couldn't see even with those massive binoculars on your face?" I joked.

Rebecca laughed too and stuck her tongue out at me mockingly. We shared that laugh, neither of us really knowing what to say. This app was revolutionary, alright. What would've been several expensive doctor visits and an even more expensive laser surgery to fix was altered with the swipe of a finger. I looked at her eyes as we laughed and found myself surprised by how beautiful they really were. Nothing had changed, really, other than the glasses no longer being in the way, yet now I could see the gentle gradient of emerald and blue that I hadn't noticed before. Maybe I was still in my feelings, or maybe that hug was making me think of Rebecca differently. All I knew was that I was lucky to have her as my assistant and that this month was going to change our lives forever.

The rest of the tests were fairly uneventful after that. We took a short lunch break after her eyesight had been fixed then returned to the research room invigorated and ready to go. I tried the height slider and was sad to find that, when maxed or min'd out, Rebecca only changed by 5 inches or so. We played with her hands, experimenting with making her fingers as thick as mine and then thinning them out almost to the size of pencils. We were shocked to find that we could even make the beginnings of webbing appear between her fingers!

After several hours of making and reverting small changes to Rebecca, we decided to call it a night and go over our notes for tomorrow. Rebecca had one last idea to close the day though as she looked over the available menus on my phone.

"Let's finish with a crazy change" Rebecca said, looking up at me with an impish grin spread across her face.

"How crazy are we talkin'?" I asked, moving to look over her shoulder at my phone.

"See for yourself." She was pointing at a menu I'd completely glossed over, simply because it was just really odd. Species.

"Wait, you want to change into an animal?" I asked in confusion. "Are you secretly a furry or something?" I joked, trying to mask my own curiosity.

"Oh shut up, I don't want to completely change into an animal" she said, rolling her eyes. "I just want to see, like, what parts I could get. You know like a cool tail, or cat eyes, or something."

I took the phone from her and sat next to her, clicking the Species menu to see the options. I got two boxes with drop-down menus: one with certain animals and another with animal parts. The body parts menu was greyed out until I selected an animal to try out, so I clicked that drop-down list first. I only had 3 options in this list: Cat, Dog, and Cow.

"Hmmm, which animal do you want to end today's tests with?" I asked, not wanting to make the decision for Rebecca.

"Cat. I love cats!" she said breathlessly. She was way more excited for this than she'd admitted.

I chuckled as I clicked Cat and moved to the second drop-down. "Heh, alright then. Let's test it with ears. Don't want to screw up those eyes I worked so hard to fix." I said with a wink.

"Haha, fine fine. Do it, click the button!"

I clicked Apply and picked up the handheld mirror we'd grabbed so that Rebecca could see the changes herself. We eagerly watched as, in seconds, her ears grew pointed and moved up the sides of her head several inches. Then... that was it. They were definitely starting to look feline in shape, but no fur could be found on them and they were still firmly placed on either side of her head. Just a little higher up, was all.

"Well, that's disappointing." I said, after we waited a few more seconds for something else to happen. "So much for a drastic change to end the night."

"Huh. I guess expecting full-on cat ears was a little too lofty of a goal. Oh well." Rebecca said nonchalantly. I could tell she was bummed, though. "Well, revert them back to normal and we'll go grab some dinner."

"Okie dokie," I said, clicking the Revert button on the bottom of the screen. We'd found out over several attempts that the Revert button worked like an Undo option, but it could only do one change back at a time. Sure enough, Rebecca's ears shrunk back down to their small oval shape and back to their normal placement. I stood up and stretched, getting ready to head out.

Rebecca stood up and reached for the patch on the back of her neck, but froze, a look of confusion on her face. Her other hand reached up for her neck as well and she started to breathe heavier in the beginning stages of panic. "Uh, Brett?"

I turned around to see her early panic signs and grew concerned. "What's up? Something wrong with the patch?"

"I-I-I can't feel it. I can't feel the patch, it's not there anymore!" Rebecca was really panicking now. "Please tell me you can see the patch on my neck." She turned around and flipped her braided red hair over the other shoulder so I could clearly see her neck. There was an obvious purple area that was the same size and shape of the patch, but, to my surprise, it was buried under a thin layer of her own skin!

"What the fuck..."