Matt leaned back in his chair as he finished posting another episode on his favorite interactive fiction website - Fiction Branches. For as long as he could remember he's had a transformation fetish, particularly gender changes, but other kinds as well, and this was a great site for like-minded individuals to get together and indulge their fantasies in a safe way.
Or so he thought.
The moment the episode went live on the site, he heard what sounded like a slight cough coming from behind him. Matt turned around to see a short little man standing on his bed.
The little fellow appeared to be in his 30s, and was well-dressed in a navy blue suit with a subtle pinstripe. He carried a black leather attache case, and his shoes were even polished. Aside from the fact that he was one foot tall, the little guy would have made a rather professional looking full-sized businessman.
Surprised, Matt sat staring at the little man. After the diminutive visitor finished smoothing out his suit and fixing his hair, both of which were apparently tousled from whatever method of travel he used to get into Matt's apartment, he sighed deeply and then looked Matt square in the eye.
"Don't look so surprised Matt, you should have known this was coming. I'm Hugh, by the way," he said, the words coming forth in a surprisingly deep voice with a refined British accent.
Finally regaining his composure, Matt said "Ah, well, hello Hugh. Nice to meet you. I guess you know who I am. Do you mind if I ask who you are and why you're standing on my bed?"
Hugh replied, "Not at all. I'm an interdimensional being that is charged with managing the various magical artifacts across the different universes. That's a bit of a mouthful, so we tend to just go by 'Keepers'. For example, one of my best drinking buddies - Geralt - is the 'Keeper of the Stone', which happens to be the very same stone you've been reading about causing all that trouble on the universe that manifests itself within Fiction Branches. Geralt was a little reckless entrusting that thing to Jon, but then again... he did always have a taste for chaos."
Matt sat dumbfounded for a bit before replying, "So you are the keeper of..."
Hugh cut him off "...the notebook, of course! I am 'Hugh, Keeper of the Notebook', and I'm here to present it to you. I think it's about time that this old thing got some use."
With that, Hugh sat down on the bed, opened up his little briefcase and pulled out what appeared to be a dusty black moleskine notebook. He then took a deep breath and blew some of the dust off before moving the band aside and opening it briefly to flip through the pages before presenting it toward Matt with both hands and a large grin on his face.
Slightly amused by that small display of pomp-and-circumstance, Matt hesitantly took the notebook from Hugh's hands. "Thanks. Uh, would you mind telling me what it does?"
"Ah yes, yes of course. That, dear boy, is a notebook. But not just any notebook. Anything you write in it can become true. All you have to do is write what you want to happen in the notebook, and when you want it to become active, you just draw a box around it. Voila! Magic!" Hugh exclaimed, seeming very enthusiastic.
Matt wasn't exactly trusting of the whole situation at this point, so he asked for some clarification. "Anything, huh? Really? And you said I have to draw a box around it? Is that like a 3D box, or just a rectangle? What if the line is curved? Sorry if I seem ungrateful, but what's the catch here? And why me?"
As he prepared to respond, Hugh's tone became more reserved, "Ah, well, the limitations are just that you can't explicitly kill someone with it, nor can you explicitly create life with it, but you can certainly create scenarios that will have a very high likelihood of doing either of those. And no large-scale changes in the sense that you couldn't conjure up world peace or a revolution in Russia or any of that bollocks. There are some things that are immovable even by powerful magic, and those are some of them. As for the box thing, the book isn't picky. It really only cares that the text you wish to activate is enclosed. It could even be a circle, or any other kind of squiggly shape, so long as the shape is closed and it encloses all the relevant text. Boxes are just easiest to draw. And as for you, Matt. Well, I've been watching you for some time and you seemed unhappy in life. I'm giving you an opportunity to change that. Given that you're a writer by trade, I figure that my particular artifact would be most useful in your hands."
Matt's mood lightened, "Wow, well, thanks Hugh. I will do my best to use it wisely."
Hugh snapped his briefcase shut and smoothed his suit once more. "Do be careful with it. You wouldn't want anybody else getting their hands on that kind of power. Anyway, I must be go..."
"...hey, before you go, did you just appear because of that wish made in the Fiction Branches universe that caused the authors to be forced to live the storylines they create?"
Hugh smirked a little, "Mayhaps, good fellow. Mayhaps." Suddenly, Matt was compelled to look away for a few seconds. When he turned back, there was no sign of Hugh, but the notebook was still in his hands.
"I'm not sure I believe all of this magic stuff, but how else could I explain what just happened? I guess it can't hurt to try. And yes, Hugh, wherever you are, I will do my best to be careful," Matt said to nobody in particular.
With that, Matt reached over to the desk, grabbed a pen, and began to think about the first thing he should write to test out his new notebook...
