Power Surge

This is a story about John Doe, a man who has reached the stage in his life that he is no longer a young man, but at the same time he is not yet an old man. At one point in his life John had big dreams and ambitions, but despite these he finds himself approaching his 30s, working for little more than the recently raised minimum wage in a job that should be paying more, living with his parents, and doing little more than on small personal projects, drinking to numb his thoughts, and masturbating to stories on his favorite website.

Our story begins on a rainy summer eve. John lumbering into his small disorganized room, drenched from the rain and exhausted yet another soul draining day of work. Throwing his bag to the wall, he proceeded to his desk. There, with an almost zombie like energy, his fingers pressed the machine's power on, and it whirred to life, mirroring his own lethargy.

"I Really should get some sleep," He sighed to himself as he glanced at his clock while waiting for the portal to the internet to be ready for his inputs. Before he could act on those better judgements, however, his screens lit his room brightly and he turned to them, "Na, I'll catch up on sleep this weekend, maybe." He moaned this to himself as he grabbed a strange headset that looked like a knock off of the 2024 Apple Vision Pro, made of scraps of sacrificial computers past.

On the screens in front of John flickered his compiler software, his fingers, flew across his keyboard adding to the already immense number of lines of code. This code was John's latest passion project. It was his attempt to seamlessly integrate the two largest tech fads of the century, AI and AR. Artificial Intelligence powering an Augmented Reality, headset, but not simply as an assistant. No, The Jarvous protocol was finished in only a few weeks. What John was working on was the ability to truly augment his reality. To be able to make what he sees, hears, and most ambitiously project electromagnetic pulses to alter what he tastes and feels. Every woman would be drop dead gorgeous bombshells, with huge tits, thin waists, and earth quaking asses. Their clothes made to look skimpy and sexy, if present at all. Their voices pitched to be sultry and inviting. Guys on the other hand will be made to look worse than John's impression of himself, weaker in appearance, and made to sound less confident. All of this and more easily controlled with verbal commands and fine tuned with classic menus and sliders, easily making adjustments on the fly, targeting individuals to adjust them relative to a set baseline. John knew he couldn't actually alter his reality in this way, but maybe he could boost his own piss poor self-esteem and confidence by changing what he perceives.

Pie in the sky dreams aside John has run into consistent struggles. Roadblock, after roadblock had have him going for days even weeks without intentional sleep. Instead he had been finding himself waking in his chair, at his desk, the the last crash log still plastered on the screen to be interpreted. This night where our story begins, with rain thundering down upon outside, is no different, not longer after the clock on John's end table flipped to 2 AM our protagonist lost the struggle against his body which needed rest and slumped onto his desk asleep. The program though had not finished compiling its latest iteration, the AI assistant he had helping him with the code still working away, and when it was ready it compiled and launched. Normally the program would spin up and while running through some intentionally system checks it would crash and provide a log of the point at which the program failed so that John could comb through his code to make corrections. This time was... different. As the code finished compiling and launched, John completely ****, as you could not quite call the state he was in sleep, there was a flash when the storm out side release a crash of lightning down upon the world below. The world below, hitting what happened to be John's house. The surge of millions of volts blasted through every appliance that was still plugged in, including the headset which lacked any safety resisters or capacitors.

Morning came, and John stretched groaning as he heard the sound of birds singing, and saw the light of the sun creeping through his window. It took a few moments for his mind to process, but with a glance at his clock, which was still off, he realized the power was out and he was late for work. Leaping out of bed he didn't even question how he got there from where he passed out on his desk, and he rushed for the shower. As he passed from his room into the hallway with only a towel wrapped around his waste he heard, "Good morning sir. I hope you slept well. I beg your pardon for having moved you to your bed when I found you asleep at your desk."

John stopped and looked for the source of the voice. It was the voice of Jarvous from Iron man which he programed as the voice for his virtual assistant while he was testing, but he wasn't wearing his headset. At least he didn't think he was, but man did his head hurt. He didn't have time to investigate, what was going on, so continuing to the shower he asked, Jarvous what time is it?

"7:54 Sir. Would you like me to add a clock to your heads up display?"

"Sure, go for it."

At that a digital clock appeared in the upper right of John's vision. This caused him to stop again, just standing in front of the bathroom door, and check again, trying everything he could John confirmed he was not wearing a headset, but he also did have a clock in his vision like some sort of heads up display. Shaking his head, he moved to open the door, but it opened for him as his younger sister (Jane, age 18, College freshman living at home) opened it from within.

"Sorry. Wait, aren't you normally at work by now?" She asked moving to get out of her brother's way, "I thought your routine was so set in stone the power being out wouldn't have mattered. Sorry I should have checked."

"It's fine," he responded stepping past her into the steamy bathroom. A sky light illuminates the space without power, city water doesn't need electricity to provide pressure, and a natural gas heater means there is still hot water. John starts his shower. "What the hell is going on," He asks himself as he begins hastily lathering himself.

"Response: A surge or electricity far exceeding safe levels surged into 'Prototype: Reality Shift' last night after configuration, and to avoid catastrophic failure and loss of data the electro magnetic projectors used the excess power to engrave the project into the strongest available system, it appears that this upload was directly to your consciousness."

"Ugh," John groaned his head splitting with a mixture of being still sleep deprived and confusion, "so your telling me I am not wearing the headset because my brain is the headset?"

"In a way sir that is correct."

"Does that mean it worked?"

"Categorically sir some functionality is not functioning as intended, but the general project is operating within the boundaries of comparable effect."

"Alright explain."

"I am unable to completely explain, sir, but it appears that the power surge and the mapping onto your consciousness may have altered the functionality of some of your programed features beyond their intended purpose."

"Ok... fine. Let's run a few tests. First, Jarvous initialize Miku protocol."

There is no response for a few moments, which gives John enough time to finish his shower. As he is toweling himself off, he hears the voice return, now a higher pitch feminine voice, "Protocol active Master. How else may I serve you?"

The Miku protocol was John's intended AI for 'Reality Shift' once he had completed getting it up and running, but as it was now stuck in his brain he figured might as well call it complete for now. Looking into the mirror, he responded, "So Miku protocol was saved, how will this work, make me look in shape." John was not overweight per say but he didn't really work out, and was on the higher end of the BMI scale which for not exercising meant he had some undesirable chub.

A moment after giving the command Miku giggles responding "Yes Sir!" and John feels instantly as though he had been hit by a car. Ever fiber of muscle feels like it is being torn. Each ounce of body fat feels like it has been lit on fire. John crumples under the feeling.

A few moments later John stands, and through heavy breaths asks, "What the hell was that?" then seeing seeing his reflection gasps, "What the Fuck?"

Standing in the mirror looking back at John is him, but as a form of peak masculinity, his muscles are defined his chin has been ever so slightly made more defined, he was larger and more powerful but not overly huge in a way that he would lack flexibility, but 'Reality Shift' was only supposed to affect what he saw, and this all felt... real.

Miku responds to her master's confusion, "I am so so so sorry master. You asked to be made to be in shape. I like completely forgot to turn of the sensory settings first."

"Wait," John responded as he was poking his newly inflated muscles, "are you telling me this is real?"

"Of course. The power surge that **** the transfer of 'Reality Shift' like totally amplified some of its potential. Would you like me to pull up your profile for you?"

"Sure, and turn that sensory setting to not allow for any pain as its default."

To this John had a menu pop up into a portion of his vision with his name at the top and a series of menus and sliders containing any aspect of him that could be imagined, from IQ, to strength to physical appearance even breaking down each muscle and bone individually by strength and size, including... he would not be a man if one of his first thought was not the size of his package. Curious he quickly scanned the options in his character sheet, and finding reproductive organs, he went to adjust his size. Now he wasn't necessarily small to begin with, he at least knew that statistically, with the average being about 5.1 in. and his measures always coming out to about 5.5 in. he knew he was fine, but with the amount of porn he had watched to this point of his life he still couldn't help but feel inadequate. So, holding true to his male brain, he slid the slider up, several other sliders adjusted with it as he noticed a setting checked to keep certain groups proportionate and he looked down. With a breath and a wince preparing himself to feel like he would be hit by another car but localized to his groin he hit the button marked apply. Not pain but pleasure pumped into the dangling appendage as it surged out in growth within moments growing to be the larger flaccid than he ever was hard. With another deep breath he grabbed his meat to accept it as real, and looking into the mirror tried to begin to think what he should do now, should he still go to work, or call out sick? Should he test to see if his ability to shift reality functions on others, it is supposed to at least alter his perceptions of others, but what if he can change them for real like he can himself? Who should he test it on first, his sister, his mom, his boss? What is the extent of this new power, can he affect people's minds, IQ was on his menu for himself... What else is in the menus that he could adjust?