Prepping for a live remix

The flat was quiet the next morning, the kind of silence that clung to walls after a long, chaotic night.

Joana stirred under a heavy blanket, blinking against the light filtering through the paper-thin blinds. Her body was sore - not from anything dramatic, just the kind of ache you earned after hours on your feet, bass thrumming up through your bones. Her hoodie had twisted up in the night, and one sock had vanished entirely. She pushed herself up slowly, rubbing her eyes.

It took a second for everything to settle in place.

Not her real bed. Not her real body. Still Priya Nair. Still DJ Raaz.

But she was starting to feel… less like a visitor.

The sampler - the RAC - sat on the windowsill, disguised and mostly dormant. Joana reached for it, tapping the hidden console open with a well-practiced sequence of touches and gestures.

Quantum Anchor: Dr. Joana Kekyll (Primary User)
Quantum Target: Priya Nair (RAAZ) / Timeline Sub-Variant: Strand-G7F3
Remaining Duration: 54 hours, 12 minutes

She exhaled, long and thoughtful. Plenty of time.

She had just over two days left in this life before the RAC pulled her back - or onward, depending on what she chose next. But the data she’d gathered so far was shallow. Surface-level. She’d played a set, smoked with strangers, soaked in the aesthetic of Priya’s world.

But testing the RAC? Stressing its capabilities, observing the psychological interplay between altered self and context?

This is something Joana could get out of Priya’s situation and she’d barely scratched the surface.

And besides, she thought, eyes drifting toward the mirror again, Priya deserves a push.

The version of her that lived here - really lived here - had the bones of something brilliant. But she was held back by fear. By finances. By a body she hid. By a network too distracted to elevate her.

Joana stared at her reflection: hoodie wrinkled, eyes puffy, lips chapped.

“This girl needs a grant,” she muttered dryly. “Or a miracle.”

She sat back on the futon and stared at the pulsing interface. She could start dialing changes in directly - tweak Priya’s proportions, juice her metabolism, drop a few curated outfits into the closet. But if she was serious about field-testing the RAC, she needed more than just outcome data.

She needed to see how people responded when the transformation wasn’t retroactive.

She wanted it visible. Tangible. Lived.

But for that, she needed a plausible explanation - one that this version of the world could absorb without short-circuiting.

She looked toward the bathroom door, then down the hall toward Mira and Lex’s rooms.

That’s when inspiration struck.

Lex.

Or more specifically, Lex’s weed dealer-slash-nutraceutical plug — the one who’d once gotten Mira “so lucid she finally filed her taxes.” Joana pulled the sampler into her lap and began tapping through the deeper RAC systems, fingers dancing with precision. It took a few hours, multiple iterations, and one forgotten cup of coffee gone stone cold, but by early evening she had reactivated a tool she hadn’t used since her post-doc years:

The Narrative Thread Editor.

“Alright,” she murmured, cracking her knuckles. “Let’s write some reality.”

Joana began drafting the structure. First: a memory thread for Lex. Nothing too invasive, just a subtle implant. Lex had recently picked up a capsule from his dealer - a rare, probably illegal biotech booster called the Nova Pill. Rumored to be either bunk or a miracle: cutting-edge neural-physio enhancer, smuggled out of an unregulated Eastern European lab. No one knew if it worked. Most people didn’t even believe it was real.

Then: a memory fragment for Mira. She’d overheard Lex brag about it while high, rolling her eyes but remembering the name. She’d laughed and told Priya she should try it just for the meme.

The final thread: a plan. Lex would casually offer it tonight - one of those stoned, low-pressure moments. “Wanna see what it does?” type energy. Just curious enough to take seriously.

Joana sat back and reviewed the full narrative edit summary on the RAC interface, projected in clean green font across the glowing sampler panel:

NARRATIVE INSERT: “NOVA PILL”
EXPERIMENTAL SUPPLEMENT
Contextual Anchors: Lex (dealer memory), Mira (hearsay), Priya (pending subject)
Event Trigger: Lex offers pill to Priya in a social context (next evening)
Event Outcome: User-controlled form/persona alteration for a short duration
Backstory Integration: Black-market origin; biotech folklore status; no known side effects
Behavioral Smoothing: Mild cognitive smoothing applied to social circle for plausibility retention
Emotional Framing: Framed as playful experimentation, not desperation or makeover attempt
Outcome Containment: All changes will be internally rationalized as effects of the pill

Joana smirked.

“This is going to be perfect.”

She hovered her finger over the EXECUTE button. There was a small thrill in the anticipation - not of the transformation itself, but of the moment the world bent to accommodate it.

She pressed it.

The sampler blinked softly, once. A nearly imperceptible wave of energy moved through the room, like a breath held and released.

Just like that, in this reality, the Nova Pill became real.

Not physically, but socially. Culturally. It existed in the minds of Lex, Mira, and Priya herself now as a casual truth. A maybe-magic capsule that might just change everything.

Joana sat back against the futon cushions, her gaze turning toward the mirror, where Priya’s reflection still looked plain. Quiet. Unremarkable.

For now.

She sipped the rest of her lukewarm coffee, a slow grin blooming across her face.

“Tomorrow night,” she whispered.