Chapter 3: The First Physical Change
The fluorescent hum of the dorm bathroom pressed in, a sterile counterpoint to the frantic drumming inside Chloe Kang’s chest. Steam from her shower still clung to the air, fogging the mirror above the chipped sink into a ghostly haze. Her laptop sat open on the closed toilet lid, the screen casting an eerie, shifting blue light across the faded floral shower curtain and onto her own face. It illuminated the app’s interface – sleek, minimalist, alien. The same one that had rewritten her mother’s cancer prognosis a terrifying week ago. And nothing happened, she reminded herself, the thought landing with a hollow thud. Mom was still undergoing the same aggressive treatment. No miraculous recovery. Just… silence from the universe. Maybe the app was broken. A glitch. A cruel simulation. Or maybe… maybe it only worked on real users. Like her.
She stared at the fogged glass, her own blurred reflection a smudge of dark hair and the suggestion of round cheeks. Her brown eyes, the ones she’d inherited from her Appa, stared back. Plain. Ordinary. Unseen. She remembered the cutting laughter at the Gamma Kappa party last Friday, the way Ben Carter’s gaze slid right past her ample hips and landed, laser-focused, on Stacey Chang’s willowy frame and startlingly blue eyes. ‘Arctic Ice,’ Stacey had called the color, tossing her hair. Chloe’s stomach clenched.
Her thumb hovered over the laptop trackpad. Logic screamed: This is insane. Dangerous. Delete it. Report it. But the yearning, sharp and acidic, drowned it out. The yearning to be seen. To be desired. To be something other than the smart, quiet, mixed-race girl who blended into the bioinformatics lab’s humming machinery.
The cursor blinked insistently over the ‘Physical Attributes’ sub-menu. She’d found it buried deep, past layers of encrypted code that had yielded surprisingly easily to her probing – almost like it wanted to be found. Her fingers, damp with condensation and sweat, trembled as she navigated to ‘Iris Color.’ The drop-down menu offered a dizzying spectrum. Browns, greens, hazels… and then the blues. Cerulean. Azure. Cornflower. Sapphire.
Her breath hitched. Arctic Ice.
Just a test, the frantic voice in her head insisted. Like debugging. See if it even works. On me. Small change. Reversible. Probably. The justification felt flimsy, paper-thin against the monumental stupidity of the act. But the image of Ben Carter looking at her with that kind of focused attention… it was a siren song.
She selected ‘Light Blue (#ADD8E6)’. A confirmation dialog box appeared, stark white against the app’s dark background.
`Confirm Permanent Alteration: Iris Color (OD/OS) to Light Blue?`
`[Y/N]`
Permanent. The word pulsed ominously. Her finger shook.
“Screw it,” she whispered, the sound swallowed by the dripping faucet. She pressed ‘Y’.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Just the relentless drone of the light and the frantic thudding in her ears. Disappointment, sharp and sudden, pricked her eyes. A stupid fantasy. A–
Then the laptop screen flared, not brighter, but deeper, the blue light intensifying, becoming almost liquid. It pulsed once, washing the cramped bathroom in an unnatural, electric azure glow. Simultaneously, a strange, cold tingle shot through Chloe’s optic nerves. Not pain. Not exactly. Like pins and needles, but deep inside her skull. Icy and invasive.
She gasped, jerking her head back. Her hands flew to her eyes. “What the–?”
Reflexively, she swiped a palm across the fogged mirror, clearing a jagged oval. The face that stared back was hers… yet utterly alien. Her dark hair, still damp. Her round cheeks, flushed. But her eyes…
Where warm, deep brown had been, there was now a clear, startlingly light blue. Not the muddy hazel of some mixed heritage. Not a dark, soulful brown. This was pale. Almost crystalline. Vulnerable. Like looking at a stranger wearing her face. The transformation was absolute. No transition, no blurring. One moment brown, the next… this impossible, fragile blue.
The app’s glow subsided, returning to its default cool luminescence. The silence rushed back in, heavier now. Oppressive.
Chloe leaned closer to the mirror, her nose almost touching the cold glass. She tilted her head left, then right. The blue eyes tracked her movements. Her eyes. Her eyes. She blinked rapidly. Once. Twice. The unfamiliar irises seemed too large, too bright against her skin. Less ‘Arctic Ice’, more… startled bird. A wave of vertigo washed over her, unrelated to the cold tile under her bare feet.
“Holy shit,” she breathed, the words barely audible. She raised a trembling finger and poked the corner of her left eye. Solid. Real. The pupil contracted slightly under the harsh light. Same as always. Except… not.
A hysterical giggle bubbled in her throat. She’d done it. It worked. On her. Not just hospital records floating in some digital ether, but her actual flesh and blood. The power of it was staggering, a heady rush that momentarily eclipsed the icy dread pooling in her gut. She could change… herself. Not just eye color. What else was in that sub-menu? Skin texture? Nose shape? Weight? The possibilities unspooled in her mind, dazzling and terrifying.
She grinned at the blue-eyed stranger, a wild, uneven stretch of lips. “Who are you?” she whispered to her reflection.
The reflection didn’t answer. It just stared back with those unsettlingly pale, alien eyes. Eyes that held none of her history. Eyes that suddenly made her feel like an intruder in her own skin. The grin faltered. The giddiness evaporated, leaving a cold, hollow space. What had she done? The silence about her mom’s diagnosis now felt heavy with unspoken consequence. And this… this was real. Permanent. Etched onto her body.
A sharp knock rattled the thin bathroom door. “Chloe? You dying in there? I gotta pee!” It was Priya, her roommate.
Chloe’s heart slammed against her ribs. She spun around, back to the mirror, pressing her palms flat against the cool tile wall. Those impossible blue eyes wide with panic in the reflection she couldn’t see.
Chloe’s breath caught, sharp and ragged, as Priya’s knuckles rapped again, louder. "Seriously, Chlo! Bladder’s about to stage a rebellion!" The doorknob rattled, a cheap, tinny sound that echoed her own frantic heartbeat. Those impossible blue eyes in the foggy mirror stared back, wide and alien – a damning visual scream.
"Uh… gimme a sec!" Her voice cracked, sounding too high, too thin. Panic scrabbled like claws up her throat. Think! Contacts? She didn’t own colored contacts. Sunglasses? At night? In a bathroom? Stupid. The sterile scent of cheap soap and mildew suddenly felt suffocating. Her reflection was a stranger, a pale-faced imposter with stolen eyes.
"One minute!" Priya called, voice laced with impatient humor. "Or I swear I’m peeing in your kombucha scoby jar!" Footsteps retreated slightly, then returned, pacing just outside the thin door. Chloe’s gaze darted wildly around the cramped space – toothpaste spatter on the mirror, damp towels piled on the floor, the laptop still glowing its dark blue promise beside the toilet. The app. It changed her eyes. Could it… undo it?
Her trembling fingers flew back to the trackpad. The interface remained open, cool and unfeeling. She navigated frantically back to ‘Iris Color’. The selected shade, ‘Light Blue (#ADD8E6)’, mocked her. She scrolled, desperate, looking for ‘Undo’ or ‘Revert’. Nothing. Only the spectrum of colors, the stark `[Y/N]` confirmation. Permanent.
A wave of hot shame washed over her, mingling with the terror. Vanity. Stupid, reckless vanity. Changing Mom’s diagnosis felt like a desperate, silent prayer into the digital void. This? This was just pathetic. Wanting Ben Carter to look at her. Wanting to be Stacey Chang for five minutes. The blue eyes in the reflection now looked fragile, foolish. Vulnerable.
Priya sighed dramatically outside. "Chlooooooe. Counting down! Ten… Nine…"
No time. No way to explain this. The options were horrifyingly simple: reveal the impossible or hide. Hide now. She lunged for the light switch beside the door, plunging the tiny room into near-total darkness, broken only by the laptop’s eerie glow and the thin strip of light bleeding under the door. "Okay! Coming!" she yelled, hoping her voice didn't tremble.
She slammed the laptop lid shut, snuffing out the blue light, leaving her blind in the sudden blackness. The dark was a relief, a temporary shield. She fumbled for the door handle, slick under her sweaty palm. Turning it slowly, she cracked the door just wide enough to slip through, keeping her face angled down, buried in the damp towel she’d snatched up as an excuse. "All yours," she mumbled, her voice muffled by terrycloth, pushing past Priya’s silhouette.
Priya blinked, momentarily confused by the darkness and Chloe’s abrupt exit. "Whoa, okay. You good? You look like you saw a ghost in the shower drain." She peered at Chloe’s towel-shrouded head.
"Fine! Just… damp." Chloe scurried across the tiny dorm room, dropping onto her unmade bed facing the wall. The rough weave of her comforter scratched her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut, her blue eyes, pressing her face into the pillow. The lingering scent of her own shampoo – coconut, familiar – felt like a taunt. The drone of Priya finally using the bathroom was both a relief and a tightening noose. Now what? Class tomorrow? Labs? Seeing anyone? Her mother?
The panic threatened to crest again. She couldn't live like this, hiding in towels and darkness. The app. It had worked. That cold tingle, the instantaneous shift… it was real. And if it could change her eyes… a desperate, dangerous thought unfurled. What else could it change? Something bigger? Something to make the blue eyes… make sense?
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the pillow. The app’s sleek, dark interface seemed burned onto her eyelids. Apprehension warred with a terrifying, burgeoning sense of possibility. She’d altered her mother’s fate, however silently. She’d changed her eyes. The power hummed under her skin, electric and terrifying.
Priya emerged, sighing with exaggerated relief. "Crisis averted. You gonna hide under that towel all night?" She flicked on the main overhead light.
Chloe flinched, burrowing deeper. "Headache," she lied. "Bright light bad." Her mind raced, ignoring Priya’s skeptical ‘hmm’. The app was still on her laptop. Charged. Ready. If blue eyes made her look like a startled freak, maybe… maybe she needed more. Something complete. Something that erased Chloe Kang as she was and built something… better. Something Ben Carter couldn’t ignore. A clean slate.
The thought was monstrous. Seductive. Sitting up slowly, still angled away, the towel fell away from her damp hair. She risked a glance towards her desk, where her laptop sat like a dormant beast. Her palms were slick again, but this time a different energy sparked through her – not just fear, but a reckless, terrifying determination. The alien blue eyes narrowed with unfamiliar resolve. She needed to disappear, just for a minute.
"Actually," she said, her voice surprisingly steady, "feeling better. Gonna… work on some code." She swung her legs off the bed, keeping her face carefully averted as she stood, moving towards her desk. Priya shrugged, already scrolling on her phone, absorbed.
Chloe sank into her desk chair, the old wood creaking. She opened the laptop. The app’s dark screen bloomed back to life. Her reflection, dimly visible on the black surface, showed slivers of that impossible blue. She navigated past ‘Iris Color’, her cursor hovering over broader categories: ‘Facial Structure’. ‘Body Composition’. ‘Integumentary System’. Each click unfolded sub-menus with terrifying granularity. Skin Pigmentation. Melanin Density. Subcutaneous Fat Percentage. Muscle Mass Distribution.
Her finger trembled over the trackpad. This wasn't changing a medical record. This wasn't just eye color. This was rebuilding herself, molecule by digital molecule. The sheer hubris burned. She thought of her mother's tired smile, her Appa’s quiet pride in her intellect, not her looks. It felt like a betrayal. But the memory of Ben Carter’s dismissive glance, the laughter echoing from the Gamma Kappa house, the years of feeling unseen… it hardened something brittle inside her.
One change hadn't been enough. She needed the whole package. Skin. Hair. Shape. A body that matched the fantasy, that made the blue eyes look intentional, desirable. Not a mistake. Taking a shaky breath that hitched in her chest, she clicked on ‘Hair Color’. She scrolled past browns and blacks, past the vibrant reds and purples she’d sometimes idly fantasized about, straight to ‘Platinum Blonde’. The fairest shade. The opposite of everything she was.
Her thumb hovered over the trackpad button. The confirmation box popped up. `Confirm Permanent Alteration: Hair Color to Platinum Blonde? [Y/N]` This was crossing a line into irrevocable territory. She glanced towards Priya, bathed in the glow of her phone, oblivious. Safe for now.
"Screw it all," she whispered, the words tasting like ash and adrenaline. She pressed ‘Y’.
The laptop’s glow intensified, turning an actinic, searing white that flooded the small dorm room, bleaching Priya’s startled face for a split second before Priya yelped, shielding her eyes. "What the hell, Chlo? Your laptop explode?" The light pulsed, not like the blue for the eyes, but sharper, fiercer.
Simultaneously, a wave of intense heat washed over Chloe’s scalp, followed by a bizarre, crawling sensation, as if a million ants were swarming beneath her skin. Then came the pain. Brief, but intense – sharp tingles erupting into a sudden, deep ache in her skull, like roots being violently ripped out. She gasped, clenching her jaw to stifle a cry, her fingers digging into the arms of the chair. She felt it happen. Not just seeing the change, but feeling it – a profound, cellular rewriting.
The blinding light vanished as abruptly as it came. Silence roared in Chloe’s ears, broken only by Priya’s confused "Dude, what was that? Are you frying your motherboard?" Then Priya froze. Her phone clattered onto her lap. Her mouth opened, slack. Her eyes, wide with disbelief and dawning horror, were fixed on Chloe’s head.
Chloe turned slowly, stiffly, towards the smudged mirror hanging crookedly on the wall beside her desk. Her reflection stared back. The blue eyes were still there, shockingly pale. But now, cascading past her shoulders, thick and unnaturally bright under the harsh dorm lighting, was a mass of hair the color of bleached bone. Platinum blonde. Utterly foreign against her Korean skin tone. A color that screamed artifice, impossibility.
Priya found her voice, a strangled whisper. "Chloe… your… hair."
Chloe raised a trembling hand. The strands felt coarser, thicker than her own fine hair. She touched the roots. They were warm. The blonde ended precisely at her scalp; there was no brown root peeking through. It was seamless. Complete. Like it had always been that way. A choked sound escaped her – half sob, half hysterical laugh. It worked. Again. Bigger.
The app glowed softly on her screen. Waiting. Power thrummed through her, a terrifying current. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. It wasn't enough. It looked wrong. Grotesque. She needed symmetry. She needed the body. The body Ben Carter would actually want. The body that belonged to those eyes, that hair. The cursor moved, driven by a desperate, accelerating compulsion. She navigated down, past hair, past skin tone adjustments she barely registered. Down to ‘Body Composition’.
Her breathing came in short, sharp gasps. Priya was still staring, mute with shock. Chloe didn't look at her. Her focus was absolute, narrowed to the screen, to the fields waiting to be altered. Subcutaneous Fat Percentage. She highlighted the current value – a number that had always felt like a brand. With a decisive jab, she erased it. Typed a new number. Much lower. Muscle Mass Distribution. She adjusted sliders, envisioning definition, leanness, the absence of softness she despised.
`Confirm Permanent Alteration: Subcutaneous Fat Percentage & Muscle Mass Distribution? [Y/N]`
The warning pulsed. Permanent. Every cell in her body screamed danger. It was madness. It was terrifying. It was the only path forward now. She had to see it through. She had to be someone else. Her finger stabbed down on ‘Y’.
This time, there was no blinding light. The laptop screen merely flickered, a quick, sickly green pulse. But the sensation that ripped through Chloe’s body was immediate and catastrophic. It wasn't pins and needles. It was a deep, visceral wrenching.
A sudden, agonizing cramp seized her abdomen, doubling her over in the chair with a choked gasp. Her skin felt like it was shrinking, tightening over her frame with alarming speed. Bones seemed to grind subtly beneath the surface, muscles flickering and reknitting in real-time. She felt hollowed out, sculpted by invisible, brutal hands. Fat seemed to melt away from her arms, her thighs, her face, leaving a terrifying, unfamiliar hardness. At the same time, a sharp ache bloomed across her shoulders, her back, her limbs – muscle fibers thickening, redefining themselves under her suddenly taut skin.
It was over in seconds. The pain vanished, leaving behind a profound, unsettling emptiness and an eerie, plastic smoothness. She felt… light. Airy. And utterly detached. She slowly straightened in the chair, her movements feeling alien, constrained by the new landscape of her body. Her old UCLA hoodie, previously snug, now hung loosely, pooling around a drastically narrowed waist. The sleeves swallowed her newly thinned arms.
She looked down at her hands resting on the keyboard. The fingers looked longer, bonier. The familiar softness of her own palm felt thinner, harder. The dorm room seemed preternaturally quiet. Even the fluorescent hum faded into a muted background buzz.
Priya hadn’t moved. She hadn’t breathed. Her face was a mask of pure, uncomprehending shock. She stared not just at the blonde hair or the blue eyes, but at the entire, impossibly altered figure hunched at the desk. The girl who looked vaguely like Chloe Kang, but wasn't. Not anymore.
The silence in the dorm room thickened, congealing like spilled soda left sticky on the linoleum. Priya stood frozen, one hand still half-raised from dropping her phone, her dark eyes wide saucers reflecting the fluorescent glare and the impossible sight before her. Her gaze scraped over Chloe: the unsettlingly pale blue irises in a face suddenly all sharp, unfamiliar angles; the thick, artificial-looking platinum blonde hair that clashed violently with Chloe’s Korean skin tone; the way Chloe’s favorite worn Bruins hoodie now hung like a deflated balloon around a frame that seemed… diminished, almost hollowed out. "Chloe?" The name came out strangled, barely a whisper. "What… what the actual fuck?"
Chloe swiveled slowly in the desk chair, the plastic groaning. The movement felt alien, her new joints unfamiliar hinges in a puppet body. Her throat closed, sandpaper dry. Seeing the raw terror and disbelief warping Priya’s usually expressive features slammed the reality home harder than the mirror had. This wasn’t just her secret anymore. It was a visible, grotesque anomaly sitting in their shared shoebox of a room, smelling faintly of old pizza and unwashed laundry. The power that had hummed through her moments before curdled into cold dread. "I…" Her voice rasped, unfamiliar even to herself. "I can explain." It felt pathetic, inadequate.
Priya took a jerky step back, bumping into her own narrow bed. "Explain? Explain? Her voice climbed, sharp with hysteria. "You look like… like someone Photoshopped a K-Pop trainee onto your… but thinner! And blonder! And bluer! How? Did you, like, trigger some weird allergic reaction to lab chemicals? Did you finally crack from that Algorithms final?" Her eyes darted wildly to Chloe’s open laptop, the app’s dark interface still glowing softly on the screen like a malevolent eye. "Is that… is that code doing this?"
Chloe flinched. There was no lying her way out. Not with the evidence radiating strangeness inches from Priya. The words tumbled out, fragmented, panicked. "Found it… deep in the MedCenter server logs… after… after Mom." She swallowed hard, the memory of altering her mother’s HER2 status from positive to negative a fresh stab of guilt beneath the new terror. "It… it changes things. Real things. I tested it… just my eyes… but then…" She gestured helplessly at her hair, her body, the chilling emptiness where her curves used to be. "One thing led to another. It just… happened so fast."
Priya stared, processing. The initial shock began to melt, replaced by a dawning comprehension mixed with something else—a fierce, insistent curiosity. "Changes things?" she echoed, her voice dropping to an intense whisper. She took a step forward, then another, her eyes locked on the laptop screen, then back to Chloe’s impossible blue gaze, then down, lingering on the drastic new leanness visible under the baggy sweatshirt. "You mean… it changed you? Your actual… body? Like, physically rearranged your molecules?" Her gaze snapped back to Chloe’s face, burning now. "Prove it. Change something else. Right now."
Chloe recoiled. "No! Priya, it's… it's scary. You feel it. Inside. It hurts. And it’s permanent! Look at me! I look like a botched Sims character!" Panic tightened her chest. Sharing the secret was one thing; wielding the app on someone else felt like stepping off a cliff blindfolded.
"Bullshit!" Priya hissed, leaning in, her face inches from Chloe’s. The scent of her peach body spray clashed with the room’s stale air. "You changed your whole damn body composition on a whim because Ben Carter wouldn’t look at you twice! Don’t give me ‘it’s scary’ now! You have goddamn magic on your laptop!" Her voice cracked, raw with a sudden, desperate yearning Chloe recognized all too well. "You think you wanted to be seen? Try living in this!" Priya grabbed her own chest, fingers digging into the soft fabric of her t-shirt over her modest, unremarkable breasts. "I’ve wanted boobs since, like, forever. The kind that make people look twice. The kind that actually fill a cute top. Do it, Chloe. Change mine."
The demand hung in the air, obscene and impossible. Chloe gaped. "Priya, no! I don't even know what I'm doing! What if it goes wrong? What if… what if I kill you?"
"Then I die with fantastic tits!" Priya spat, her eyes wild, glistening. "Don’t you get it? This is everything! This is the cheat code we always joked about! You tested it on your mom’s cancer! You tested it on your eyes, your hair, your whole body! Test it on my boobs! Just… make them bigger! Perkier! Like… porn-star level! C’mon, Chlo! Please!" Her voice broke on the last word, shifting from demand to raw, vulnerable pleading. "You owe me for scaring the crap out of me. Fix this. Give me something."
Priya’s desperate excitement mirrored her own earlier reckless impulse, magnified, and Chloe couldn't help but be swept along. The app’s interface seemed to pulse, inviting. Resistance felt futile. Chloe turned back to the screen. Her fingers navigated with shaky precision, past her own altered parameters. She found ‘Secondary Sexual Characteristics’ > ‘Breast Morphology’.
Fields populated: Volume, Projection, Firmness, Areola Size, Nipple Protrusion. Priya leaned over her shoulder, breathing fast, her presence hot and insistent. "Big," she whispered, pointing a shaking finger. "Like… double Ds. And high. Really high. Like, defy gravity high. And… firm. Super firm." Her voice was thick with wanting.
Chloe’s stomach churned. She adjusted the sliders. Volume: drastically increased. Projection: maximized. Firmness: set to maximum. She left the areola and nipple settings untouched, too nauseous to delve deeper. The confirmation box appeared. `Apply Modifications to Subject: Priya Sharma? [Y/N]`. Subject. Priya wasn't code. She was her roommate. Her friend. Mostly.
"Priya…" Chloe tried one last time, her voice thin. "Are you sure?"
"DO IT!" Priya shrieked, slamming her palm down on the desk, making the laptop jump.
Chloe flinched. Her finger, moving with the numb inevitability of a falling stone, pressed ‘Y’.
No blinding light this time. Just a low, subsonic thrum that vibrated the cheap desk and rattled their teeth. Priya gasped, a sharp intake choked off mid-breath. Her hands flew to her chest. Her eyes widened, not in pain, but in utter, overwhelming shock.
Chloe watched, frozen in horror. Priya’s small breasts swelled beneath her thin t-shirt like time-lapse flowers blooming under toxic fertilizer. Fabric strained, then stretched unnaturally taut. The growth wasn't gradual; it was a rapid, grotesque inflation. Priya’s back arched involuntarily as if pulled by the sudden, immense weight blossoming on her front. A soft, involuntary groan escaped her lips – a sound of profound, disorienting pressure.
It stopped as suddenly as it began. The thrumming ceased. Priya swayed on her feet, her balance utterly disrupted by the new weight high on her chest. Her t-shirt was stretched drum-tight, the neckline digging in, revealing the dramatic, impossible slope of cleavage. Gingerly, Priya reached up to feel her new breasts, each one overflowing her small hands. She stroked them softly, her nipples immediately responding, quickly visible through her t-shirt. She shuddered, from dismay or ecstasy, Chloe couldn't tell.
"They're... perfect," she whispered.