"So, you're telling me that you haven't always had those legs and feet?"
He nods. "Among other things."
"...and you're telling me this broken remote, pda, uh, thing made it happen?"
"Uh, yes. I think so."
Julie shook her head in disbelief. "Jim, this thing looks like it belongs in a dumpster. It barely holds a charge, I've had to keep it plugged in just to keep the display on. You think it can alter the fabric of... of... the fabric of YOU, Jim?"
"Well, I can't think of any other explanation," he shrugged. "You pressed one of these buttons, and then I had a girl's lower half." He gestured to the remote and then to the miniskirt covering his beefy party girl pelvis, respectively.
"Maybe you've lost your marbles," Julie muttered.
"Actually, I seem to have gained a pair," Jim frowned, shifting at the hips.
"Cute," she deadpanned. "Alright, then let's test it. If this little doohickey can edit people, I want to know how."
Jim poured over the device, squinting to make out scratched out and faded symbols on its many disjointed buttons. "Which button did you press earlier? It would've been just before I went to the bathroom."
Julie squinted at the buttons, but remained quiet, allowing the silence hang in the air a hair too long.
"You don't remember, do you?" he sighed.
"Maybe... that one?" she pointed at a button. "Or maybe this one," she pointed at another.
Jim, hesitantly, pressed the first button down.
Ding!
An unreadable block of outputted text marched down the screen. He inspected his body. His mostly average, mostly healthy male upper half was still perched on that Ashley's girl's somewhat larger, somewhat more athletic lower half. His torso was still clothed with his company polo and his flat chest was still supported by a simple baby blue brassiere. On his lower end, he was still sporting Ashley's shimmering sequined skirt, beneath which he could still feel her hefty girldick hanging loose in her grey-blue boxers. Simple boxers and a sequined miniskirt were an interesting combination, and Jim couldn't help but wonder if that spoke to Ashley's personality in some capacity. It didn't.
"No change?" Julie felt the nipples of her free-hanging average-sized breasts shift and brush against the inside of her own branded company polo, as normal, and she stealthily adjusted her penis in what she thought was her usual everyday racy red panties through the pocket of her work-friendly men's khaki slacks, equally oblivious to any changes on her end.
"Nope," he rebutted.
"Here, let me try." Julie didn't wait for Jim's response. She quickly snatched the remote from the counter space between them and, after a moment's glance, she pressed down on the other button she thought she may have before.
Ding!
Neither noticed, and they could hardly be blamed this time. Even even if they were aware, it would have been difficult to pin down the change as it was far less tangible than their previous one. They had swapped occupations. Now Julie was the senior employee with the experience under her belt. Unfortunately, it came with a predicament: her degree had little to do with her career path. Would she leave the repair shop post-graduation in search of an entry position somewhere else? She might have to take a lower pay, or maybe even an unpaid internship to get started. Would it be worth losing the modest but steady cash flow she had now? The repair shop wasn't glamorous and it certainly wasn't cushy, but it was enough to get by.
Meanwhile, Jim was in more dire straights. Julie had options, but Jim, while still a college dropout with debt to pay, was now only a novice at the shop. He had no seniority and often didn't get much to do beyond working the register at the front counter. Their manager, prior to the swap, had been slow to trust Julie with larger and more complex tasks when more qualified employees were available, much to her chagrin. This was in part because she was simply less versed in tech work than many of the shop's previous new hires (e.g., Jim) and in part because she wasn't planning to stick around for very long. Those rationales may not have applied to Jim, but it was now how he was treated at the shop now nonetheless. That meant he was stuck earning next to nothing, barely managing his rent while his loans were gaining interest.
There was a slight shift in his head space as a result of his new financial situation: the remote wasn't just a means to regain familiar body parts, it was an opportunity. He could use it to get a better paying job - a better livelihood all around. He just needed to know how it worked. Obliviously, he wished he had Julie's experience with electrics.
They examined eachother, eyes scanning closely for any signs of change. Still nothing. Jim groaned impatiently.
"Alright, hold on. What are we doing differently here?" Julie mused. "Wait, didn't you input your name somewhere before it swapped you? Awareness, right? That might be it."
"Yeah! Can you find that in the settings?"
"I can try," Julie responded, attempting to navigate the jumbled, buggy, partially obscured gui.
"Awareness... You don't think it made any other changes to us we can't see, do you? Y'know, because neither of our names are in that section now?"
She shrugged. "I don't see what the point of altering reality would be if no one could see it. I'm sure there'd have to be some sort of fail safe to prevent that. Not that I believe you or anything, I still think all the stress is finally getting to you."
Jim made a tired, exasperated look, but didn't say anything.
"It tried to do something though, judging by those text outputs," she continued. "My guess is it's nothing but error logs. Wish I could see them without all the corrupted text though, maybe that'd tell me a little more about the device."
Finally, Julie rediscovered the awareness setting. Pressing down softly on the pda's dingy, cracked screen automatically added her name to the system just like it had for Jim earlier, which was weird even beyond the obvious reasons since it didnt really look or feel like a touch screen. Neglecting to add Jim to the awareness list for the moment, she clicked at the same first button she had a moment prior.
Ding!
Her eyes widened as Jim's bra suddenly lifted and separated her usually unconfined boobs and the loose freedom of foreign boxers instantly dropped her formerly contrained dick and balls into something approaching a free hang.
"Oh shit!" Julie stammered. "Undo! Undo!" Her shaking fingers flew over the remote's controls, hastily locating that button, in a panicked frenzy. Lucky for her, the button she found was the same.
Ding!
Emancipation! Her breasts were free once again beneath her shop polo. Beneath her jeans, she had returned to a similar false normality now that her skimpy panties were wrapped once again around her cock.
Jim furrowed his brow. "Did you just swap us BEFORE putting my name back into the awareness settings?"
"Y'know, I forgot to mention this earlier, but I believe you 100%," Julie grinned awkwardly. "I think this thing might bend reality."
"Smooth."
"In all seriousness, I put us normal. Or normal for me, anyway... your lower half is presumably still that ditzy customer's." She pulls up the awareness settings again, sliding the remote over the countertop to her coworker. "Here, just tap the screen."
Jim swiped the device with a passive glare that expressed something somewhere between quasi-disgruntled and semi-relieved. All-in-all, frustrations quickly faded as he realized they were one step closer to figuring this whole thing out.
~~
