Girlfriend with Testing Device Ch. 25

You teased me by taking a deep cupful, savoring the flavour and the look of nervous curiosity on my face.

"So, the organization that I work for. It turns out that we have a... well, let's just call it an internship program. I want to put you forward as a prospective candidate."

"You want to hire me!?"

"Well, not right away. You're still in school, after all. You'll have to finish your Ph.D before we snatch you up for real, but as a prospective member for the program, we'd try to keep you at a default aware state. Frankly, the more exposure you have to this sort of thing the easier it makes the whole hiring process, as you might imagine."

"I- I don't believe it."

"Well, its not all sunshine. We'll start you off small - you might have to work phone support a bit, get coffee, that sort of thing, but this saves us from having to swap a whole educational base on some other candidate. And hey, the pay isn't the best, but well," your naked tits bounced as you shrugged, "you can't beat the benefits."

"Wait, you do phone support?"

"As much as I hate to say it, we're going to have to start to, if this whole test run is any indication." You sighed. "Honestly, I have no idea how the higher ups are going to handle this whole fiasco. I'll try to play it down, of course, but what if some other poor girl makes some mistakes and we need to swap things back for her or adjust her awareness or something like that? Good customer support is going to be important. And that's assuming we actually get the thing out of the prototype stage -- there's still the possibility that this whole project might get scrapped, and, well, honestly, a lot of the features just aren't working the way we want them."

"What features aren't working right?"

"Well your device keeps overheating when you try to do tricky role swaps, for starters. It's sort of a known issue with this run, but its something we've got to deal with." You picked up the device in both hands and stared down at it, inspecting it and rotating it like it was a particularly tricky Rubik's cube. "The current thinking amongst the R&D staff is that the reality obliviousness on this particular model is a little harsh. We're thinking of maybe dialing it down a bit so that they're a little more cognizand of their new parts, while still making them think its normal."

"You can do that?"

"Of course! So like, with your model, if you swap some girl's breasts onto a guy, he'll still think he's got a very masculine chest, and everyone else will agree. That's, well, boring, right? We want to keep things more at a level where he'll still realize he has boobs, and that that's unusual for a guy, but that his specific case isn't supernatural or impossible or anything, it's just the way things are. We think that'll make it a little more intuitive and a little more useful for, well, the kind of crazy plans a lot of our users tend to get up to."

My jaw dropped. All the playing around I had done with the thing, all the little experiments I'd done to try to suss out it's rules and logics and possibilities. I thought I had come to understand, perhaps better than anyone, how that thing worked and what it was capable of, and you meant to tell me that that was all just some kind of setting programed into the stupid thing?

"Oh, oh!" You grinned excitedly. "We're also planning on adding a bunch of extra little shortcut buttons. Not quite swaps, but like, just imagine, if you wanted to, say, perkify someone's boobs, or enbiggen something! Right now, you have to find someone with just the right amount of perkiness and swap, right? Well what if there was a button that just did it for you?"

"Why would you ever need to do that?"

"Demographic testing assures us that boob size and perkiness are a huge priority." you laughed. "We're thinking of expanding the contextual element, as well. We're seeing great things with Project Yarndoll in that regard. Rather than being as close to a direct 1:1 swap of history, you can custom tailor the specific history of the swapped elements. It's really opening up a lot of possibilities. We've already got a few people picked out for test runs on that. I'm really excited to see what happens with that one."

"How would you even control something like that?"

"Same way you control the current one. You've just got to point it, think real hard about what you want, and press the button."

"What? No..." I furrowed my brow. "you've got to adjust the dials first."

"Ellen," you said, turning the thing to me. "None of these dials are labeled."

My head spun. I thought back to all the times I'd set the device, all the times I'd oh so carefully rotated those dumbthings until I had found exactly what I was looking for. He was right, I had just kept thinking about what I'd wanted until I had somehow known the thing was set right. How had I not realized that?

"It made me oblivious to its own controls? What about all the times it went off by accident? Or swapped the wrong thing, or the wrong person?"

"Well, it's not perfect. Sometimes people's minds wander as they're trying to use it, sometimes it has a hard time reading certain people, hell, sometimes it just has a mind of its own. We're working on it. It probably didn't help though that it kept getting dropped like that.

"Oh my god."

"If this is blowing your mind," you laughed. "your first day on the job is going to be fun."

"Why me?"

"Huh?"

"Why would you make me that offer? You said yourself that you can swap an education onto another candidate, right? Surely you could find someone else better qualified. Why would you pick me?"

"What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good story. A glimmer of hope in the darkest hour? The nascent power of true love? Swapped up boobs everywhere? It's exactly my sort of thing." You laughed fondly. "I didn't actually think you were going to come out of this one in one piece, to tell you the truth, but that didn't mean I wasn't rooting for you. I want your story to have a good ending." You seemed to catch the softness in your eyes then straightened up and cleared your throat. "This is all off the record, of course."

"Thank you." I was overflowing with gratitude.

"Oh, there is just one small thing I'd like in return."

"What?"

"I want you to let me know how it all works out, okay? With you and Evan, and with Elizabeth, and with your whole new life. We might be coworkers someday, don't keep me in the dark."

"Sure." I laughed. "I won't spare a single detail."

"Now then," you started packing up your unconscious machine. "I should really be getting out of here. I needed to have this report in yesterday." You glanced around conspiratorially. "Are there any last-minute swaps you wanted to make? Now that you really are off the record?"

I looked down at the device.

I looked around the room.

"Actually, Frank..." A mischievous smile crossed my lips. "I can think of a few things..."

To be concluded (yes, really) in part 26 - After All!