At first glance, looking down the page indicating how food choices mapped to attributes of the male physique, things didn't look too bad. Jack would be a strapping young muscular man, somewhat shorter than he might have liked, but with plenty to make up for that in the crotch area.
The strange mutually exclusive choices on the food counter made a lot more sense now. The carrot/parsnip/red-cabbage choice had been choosing hair colour: Jack would be a redhead, having chosen carrots. The amount of carrots defined how long the hair would be. Jack had chosen poorly there, but figured he could always get it cut off.
He flicked back to the front page of the manual to reread the general overview section. It seemed to original choice of French cuisine meant he would be a Frenchman. Not so bad, easy access to the Alps, good for skiing, should be fine.
Apparently, the Earth of the Next Life was distinct, but geographically identical from the Earth he'd just come from. Where this in-between processing plant was, was a good question with no hint of an answer in the documentation he had.
Scanning down the page further something caught his eye. Something he'd already read, but had failed to take in.
'Meat choice: In most cuisines, there will be a clear meat choice. This maps onto choice of gender. Usually there will be clear imagery to indicate which choice maps onto which gender, but if you are in any doubt, please ask your server. Once you have chosen your future gender, please turn to the appropriate page in the manual for how further food choice map onto anatomy.'
Jack's heart was racing. It was pretty clear to him that having failed to choose the hot-dog, he'd made a very serious error indeed.
He panicked for a minute and got up and banged on the door with no success. He'd made his choice and there didn't seem to be any way back into the canteen to correct it.
He forced himself to calm down. This would be easy to sort out. At some point he'd interact with a member of staff from this strange place again and he would have the chance to explain his error.
Sitting back down, he flicked to female anatomy page to see how his food options worked out there.
A lot of it was largely the same. The carrots still mapped onto red hair, but the average length used as a basis to add onto was longer, so the large pile of carrots he'd picked would give him hair down past his waist.
The sweet corn mapped onto height: baby-corn was an inch off average, and corn-on-the-cob an inch on. While on the male page his 4 pieces of baby-corn had moved him down from 6'1" to 5'9", here he would end up at only 5"1' as the female average height was only 5"5'.
Then it was the turn of the mashed potato. Jack gulped as he read the mappings. The potato mapped onto breast size and Jack suddenly understood the dinner-lady's warnings. One large spoonful was plus two cup-sizes and starting at the average of a C-cup, meant Jack would be up to a G-cup with his two large spoonfuls of mash.
"Phew!" he exclaimed out loud. "Good job I'm going to sort this out before I have to become her!"
At that moment, what was obviously an automated voice started speaking over a hidden intercom.
"Processing complete." It said. "Enjoy your new life, Mr. Morris."
Everything went dark.
