Alternate You teaser

Here’s a preview of my newest story Alternate You:

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Saturday was ordinary enough. Ethan got in a good several hours of Skyrim before heading out for some food. When he returned he logged back in and went on some more quests with his friend, Pete. They’d been friends since middle school and though they only occasionally saw each other physically, they spent many hours online together.

It’s a cliché to say that people are more comfortable online because they can be whoever they want, but in Ethan’s case it was true. In real life he was a decent sized guy, not fat but not exactly thin either, with a full beard and thick fingers that he thought of as clumsy and oversized. He wished he was more graceful, more able to open himself up to others but he was raised in a place where guys weren’t supposed to open themselves up lest they be ridiculed as sissy. That attitude had stuck with him his whole life. Sometimes Ethan even wondered if it would have been better had he been born a woman, but the closest he ever came to realizing this was to choose a female avatar for most of his games.

It was around midnight and Ethan was in the middle of one particularly tricky challenge when his phone buzzed. After slaughtering enough draugr to be able to take his eyes of the screen he picked up his phone. There was a message:

ALTERNATE YOU

DOWNLOADED.

RUN?

YES NO

Thinking it was some kind of virus Ethan pressed ‘No’ and put the phone back on the armrest of his Lay-Z-Boy before returning to his game. He’d have to wipe his phone later. A few minutes later the phone buzzed again. Ethan glanced down:

ALTERNATE YOU

DOWNLOADED.

RUN?

YES

This time there was no ‘No’ to press. Ethan swore and tried turning his phone off and on, but as soon as it reloaded the message popped up again:

ALTERNATE YOU

DOWNLOADED.

RUN?

YES

He couldn’t access any other menus or close out the message except by pressing ‘Yes’.

‘Shit,’ he swore to himself. He excused himself from the game and logged off. Ethan always felt a pressing need to fix problems right now, and if he couldn’t they’d sit at the back of his mind and nag at him.

To be safe he popped out his sim card and turned off his router, hoping that at least whatever virus it was wouldn’t be able to steal all his information right away. Then he pressed ‘Yes’.

A loading bar appeared and quickly reached 100%. Then after a second the screen went black. Just when Ethan thought the virus must have killed his phone his name appeared:

ETHAN THOMPKINS

Beneath that was an avatar of a naked man. Ethan’s stomach dropped as his first thought was that it was some sort of porno virus. But as he looked closer at the figure he realized that it was him. And it didn’t look like a computer generated simulation, either, it looked photo-realistic. More than photo-realistic somehow. It was his body exactly as it existed. He zoomed in and out, rotated the avatar around. It was him all right, every mole and hair in place.

‘What the hell?’ Ethan mumbled.

How were they able to get his body so exactly right?

Beside his body were a number of menus that popped up into scroll down sub-menus when pressed. They presented options for changing every part of the body from hair to toenails. At the top of the list was ‘Sex’.

Curious now, Ethan pressed ‘Sex’, then scrolled down and chose ‘Female’. The avatar’s penis disappeared, replaced with mound of coarse hair but otherwise looked exactly the same. Ethan laughed out loud. That wouldn’t do at all. He started cycling through the sub-menus.

Each sub-menu brought up a range of different options and a closeup of each choice popped up as Ethan scrolled through. Oddly, the closeups didn’t look like the usual computer generated body parts; they looked almost real. Did they really take pictures of hundreds, or even thousands of women just for this? It was especially obvious in the eyes. Where usually avatars had dead looking eyes, the ones Ethan scrolled through were startlingly real and when he looked close enough he could even see the tips of the veins around the edges. If this was CGI it was incredibly detailed and unlike anything he’d ever seen. Another thought nagged at Ethan, why go through all this trouble for a virus?

He decided to follow it and see where it led. He slimmed down the avatar’s body, removed all the hair except on the top of the head and between the legs. He selected trim fingers, arms and legs, making his avatar slim and graceful. He gave her light brown skin and straight, black hair that fell down to her shoulders. He made her face cute, with a tiny, gentle curve of a nose and dark almond shaped eyes. He left his glasses on, alternating the frame slightly to match her face, but he’d always had a thing for girls with glasses.

Ethan then played around with her breasts, pumping them up to see how big the app would let them go. There didn’t seem to be any limit and he stopped when the breasts were as big as the rest of the figure. He chuckled and reduced them back down to a still big, but much more realistic, C cup. After playing around with a few more settings he sat back and examined the girl he’d created. She was gorgeous and Ethan felt a small pang of regret that she didn’t actually exist.

There were seemingly hundreds of other options that Ethan scrolled through including ‘History’ and ‘Personality’ but he was getting bored of playing around with it and wanted to see where all of this was leading. He scrolled to the bottom and pressed ‘Save’. Another message popped up:

DEFAULT OTHER OPTIONS?

YES NO

Ethan didn’t know, so he just pushed ‘Yes’. The message disappeared, replaced with another:

ALTERNATE YOU INITIATING

Ethan watched it for a few minutes but nothing seemed to be happening. Probably because it couldn’t connect to the internet and do…whatever it was supposed to do.

By now it was after two in the morning so Ethan brushed his teeth and went to bed. The last time he checked, right before going to sleep, the app was still initiating.

Oh well, he thought, I’ll fix it in the morning. He placed his glasses on the bedside table and lay back. He was asleep in seconds.

II.

Ethan woke to the sunlight streaming in around the edges of his blinds. He rolled over onto his side and tried to eke out a few more minutes of sleep but his body didn’t feel right. There was an uncomfortable weight resting on the top part of his arm. He wiggled back and forth, trying to get comfortable but the weight remained, hanging from off his chest. With his top hand he reached over and grabbed his chest to physically adjust it. His fingers wrapped around a round, firm breast and Ethan’s eyes shot open.

He looked down at his body, tossing long hair out of his eyes to do so, and found himself looking down into a red nightie that barely hid two large breasts. The hand resting on top was slender, the fingers soft and delicate with glossy nails.

Ethan sat up in bed, the two breasts hanging down beneath his gaze jiggling and bouncing as he stared down into his own lovely cleavage. Further beneath him, two long, lean legs stretched out from beneath a pair of lacy panties. He hooked one tiny thumb under the elastic band of his panties and pulled them up just enough to see the coarse hair of his new mound. He let go of the elastic and it snapped back on him as he gasped out loud, a high pitched feminine sound that made him bring his hands to his lips. His soft, smooth lips. His hands wound around his face. His beard was gone, replaced with smooth skin and soft, gently rounded features.

Ethan threw the covers back and leapt out of bed. He grabbed his glasses and pushed them on as he rushed to the bedroom door and the mirror hanging from the back of it, his body jiggling and moving in unfamiliar ways. He closed the door and as the mirror slid into view so, too, did the image of a beautiful woman. Ethan stared at his transformed reflection. The woman in the mirror had hair disheveled with sleep and her pretty mouth gaped open in an ‘o’ of surprise. Her eyebrows were neatly trimmed, arching gracefully over her dark, almond shaped eyes. Ethan brought the fingers of both hands to his lips and the woman in the mirror did the same.

This was impossible.

Ethan’s hands were shaking as he slowly rubbed his smooth cheeks and watched his new reflection imitate him. His broad nose, deep set eyes and heavy chin were gone, replaced with a cute, upturned nose, gorgeous light brown eyes and narrow chin. He stared at the woman in the mirror—at himself. The form-hugging red nightie barely held his breasts in place and, together with the red panties, barely covered his new form. He traced a finger down one long, hairless arm, marveling at how sensitive his skin seemed.

He turned around to look at his backside. His butt was thicker, his thighs flared out slightly before tapering down to the legs of his dreams: tanned and golden and seemingly endless. He wasn’t fat but he had a nicely shaped, full feminine body. He looked gorgeous. He looked…just like the avatar he had designed the night before. He remembered that short pang of yearning when he’d created her of never being able to experience her. Well, that was gone now, because he’d gotten his wish. Boy, had he gotten his wish.

It had to be the app. He rushed back to his phone and swiped to the app with one small finger. There was a message:

RESET AVAILABLE IN:

40:50:34

Ethan watched the seconds tick off. There didn’t seem to be any other options but to wait.

He was stuck like this for two days! He was a girl—he looked down at the breasts hanging from his chest—a woman, really. What would he tell his friends? Could he avoid work for two days? He scratched his face but the smooth absence of beard just brought home how much his body had changed. This couldn’t be happening.

‘Ok, get a grip,’ he said out loud, once again surprising himself with the sweet voice that dropped from his new lips.

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. Think. He tried to clear his mind and when he did, a little nagging thought that had been hidden away behind the sensations of his new body popped into his subconscious. He opened his eyes and looked around the room. The large San Diego Comic Con poster still hung from a side wall, a memento of when he’d actually been. It was surrounded by the other posters of various video games and even a Halo stand-up figure he’d scrounged from the nearby Gamestop. It was all the same. Mostly. His eyes flitted over to his curtains. There. That was different. Instead of the dark blue and white striped curtains he’d always had there was a green and white striped curtain. A small difference, but still. His eyes swept back across his room and picked out other subtle differences: the small purse crumpled on top of his chest of drawers, the cream colored lampshade of his bedside table lamp, the brand of skin lotion sitting on his nightstand.

On a whim he crossed to his closet, his tiny toes sinking into the soft carpet. He opened it up and found a closet filled with women’s clothes. He skimmed through the tank tops and skinny jeans, the small hoodies and dresses, the conservative blouses and the casual t-shirts. He flipped past a few shirts and found Minecraft’s Steve staring back from one. He’d had this one as a guy, but here it was smaller and more form fitting. The whole closet, in fact, was packed with clothes he might have picked out had he been a woman. It appeared that it was more than just his body that changed.

He walked through the rest of his spacious apartment, picking out more small changes: the bathroom sink full of makeup supplies, a couple scented candles here and there but otherwise it was much as he’d remembered. He sat down on his familiar Lay-Z-Boy and folded one long leg underneath him, his mind crying out to explore the tanned, beautiful skin but he had a mystery to solve first.

Ethan opened up his laptop—a Hello Kitty skull sticker plastered on the front—and brought up Facebook. He stared at the auto-saved email address: vanessa.thompkins@gmail.com. He plucked his soft bottom lip in thought. It wasn’t just his body; his whole life had changed. He was Vanessa.

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You’ll have to buy the story for the rest. Naturally, Ethan can’t resist exploring his new body together and with others, both male and female. Available at Smashwords or Amazon.