The Next Three Days and a Chat over Takeout

The rest of the weekend passed uneventfully and Caleb saw Evan’s disposition sink even lower as Monday approached. Over the next two week days, the roommates barely saw each other, Curriculum planning and QA testing took up their days respectively.

When Caleb did see Evan at mealtimes, he looked disheveled, red-eyed, and defeated as if the weight of all those prior choices had suddenly caught up with him. It was all Caleb could do to not reveal the surprise he had coming the next day if the tracking notifications he had been getting were correct.

Finally on Wednesday evening, the doorbell rang during dinner(leftover Chinese take-out) and Caleb opened the door to find a plain two foot square box sitting on the stoop with a shipping label marking it from HFI.

Taking the box inside, Caleb sat it on the empty side of the dinner table, grabbed his pocket knife and started cutting the tape.

“What's that, Caleb? Get some new part for your desktop or new hobby shit?”

“Nah, it finally came in, the solution to that problem we talked about on Saturday, remember? It's called Instant Girlfriend™️ and it's supposed to help you get one, at least from what the Ad said.”

Evan blushes slightly but then composes himself with a sad yet skeptical look on his face.

“Caleb, man, I appreciate what you are trying to do, but I'm pretty sure whatever is in that box ain't gonna get me a girlfriend unless it's got some magical height and muscle growth pills. You know those banner ads always lie, otherwise every **** dude who clicked one would be running around with nine inch cocks chasing all the ‘Horny Singles in their Area’.”

Caleb removes the safety packing materials from the box revealing a zippered foam case with the letters ‘Visualizer’ printed on it, a small 4” plastic hard case with ‘Recombinex-241: Unlock the Potential!’ and lastly a spiral laminated notebook with ‘Directions for Proper Usage'.

“Uh, Evan this looks way too legit to be some fake penis pills, I'm pretty sure that's a case for VR goggles, it looks like the one I have for my Oculoid 3. Lemme check out the notebook.”

Evan rolls his eyes, returns to his meal and Caleb sits back down to his with the notebook laid to the side. Opening the cover he is greeted with boilerplate messaging about enjoying HFI products and table of contents.

• Introduction -1
• Our Promise - 3
• Setting up the Visualizer Program - 4
• Using the Visualizer - 25
• Unlocking the Potential! - 47
• Tips and Tricks for Happy Relationships - 50
• FAQ - 57
• Legal Notice - 64
• Index - 70

Flipping over to page four, Caleb sees basic quick installation similar to his Oculoid 3 and a pre-printed Username and password on a sticker at the bottom.

Username: CSWizard

Password: HelpingHand31!

“Weird, I guess they generated the default username from the email used to sign up. This definitely looks like my Oculoid 3 set-up guide. You willing to at least give this thing a *try* if I get it set up?”

“Sure I guess, still sounds fake, probably gonna end designing some VR Digital Girlfriend which will really make me feel lonely as hell.”

Moving past that comment, Caleb sees a list of personality, ethnicity, body type and facial features parameters. Probably to best represent the type of girl to visualize. ‘This thing is hella detailed, it's even got sexual preferences and kinks, damn’, he thought.

The rest of the chapter had command line prompts, which made sense for a Beta release, though he was willing to bet half the people who had an issue didn't know how to use these for debugging.

The next chapter walked through the Visualizer sessions but all the terminology was that vague stuff you read in bad self-help books, so Caleb skimmed it before moving on to the weirdest part: the Recombinex-241.

‘Recombinex-241’ is a new pharmaceutical development from EthiCorp that allows the subject to reach their full potential! This new medicine stimulates tissues to promotes growth, healing, and other positive changes.* For fastest results, please use the included injector or if you don't feel comfortable using that, dilute each vial in 300ml of clean water before ingestion with your next meal!

*Please note that depending on the extent of desired changes, the amount of time, dosages, and extra caloric intake will be variable based on the default state of the subject.

Caleb holds up the small plastic case and hears the faint tinkling and sloshing of vials inside.

“Uh, Evan looks like this is what you’re looking for, some kinda growth serums, probably turn you into Cap if you took all of them.”

“I trained in Biology and Chemistry,Caleb the only things that can produce that level of changes are hormones and I'm pretty sure that whatever is in those is probably a placebo because that amount probably wouldn't be enough for a standard course of hormone therapy unless it's a stupidly unsafe concentration.

“Well the disclaimer does mention dilution and variable time and dosages to reach the desired state, so I guess they took that into account.”

Evan washes down the last bite of his noodles with a gulp of soda while eyeing the case suspiciously.

“Yeah, that's definitely a placebo then, probably put that in so they can walk back any claims of efficacy so they don't have to do refunds. I'm gonna go play some Solar Lords: Orion Conquest. Hit me up on Voice Chat when you are done messing with the ACME Digital Girlfriend Creation Kit and wanna play a session.”

With that, he drops the plate and glass in the sink and heads upstairs to his room. Caleb finished his meal, washed the plates and glasses, leaving them to dry on the rack. Gathering the random contents of the box, he heads up two flights to the master bedroom. Dropping the box on the bed, he powers on his desktop then returns his attention to the box.