I knew it only took the ptop a second to write the update when it was a purely mental change, but after a half minute I still didn't feel any different. And the longer I sat there waiting for it, the more my thoughts wandered.

  I ended up thinking about what Chelsea said, how even a simuted world still gave us real memories and experiences. If she was right then it would have been the same for my mom, all of her experiences would have been real for her too.

  My mom was as real as me and Chels and Gwen. And that thought made me happy, but also sad. Mom was still gone, but at least my memories of her were real. After thinking about her for another minute or two my thoughts eventually drifted back to the ptop and the question of reality.

  It took another minute or so before I came to a decision. A couple decisions actually. If there were other worlds, I wanted to know about them. Maybe even visit them. I also wanted to know who was behind it all, and why they were doing it. That was maybe the biggest question.

  Why did they have to make our world such a shitty pce? Why would anyone go to all the trouble of making a fake world, only to fill it full of hatred and intolerance? Why make it a pce where a handful of greedy billionaires had all the money and got away with whatever they wanted, while everyone else had to suffer and struggle just to make ends meet?

  And finally, was there anything I could do to fix it?

  According to my character sheet, as a 'SysAdmin' with root access I was supposed to keep the realms running smoothly. I was supposed to patch glitches and fix problems. And as far as I was concerned, our world had a whole lot of problems that needed fixing.

  That's when I finally realized those mental changes had taken effect after all. Rather than being a sudden instant shift it happened slowly, over the course of a few minutes. So I didn't really notice when it happened, but in retrospect the difference was obvious.

  I opened my eyes and regarded that little pink ptop on the desk in front of me, and sure enough I was no longer scared of what it could do. I wasn't about to do anything silly or reckless with it, I still respected its power, but like any other computer it was just a tool. And I was determined to learn how to use it effectively.

  With that goal in mind I began a deliberate and methodical search through the small computer's directory tree, to figure out what built-in commands its custom OS supported, what applications were installed, and whether or not there was any built-in documentation to expin how it worked.

  Over the next hour or so I slowly made my way through every sub-directory, paying attention to every interesting find I came across. And rather than letting myself get side-tracked when I did find something that caught my attention I just made note of it then continued on my search. That way I wouldn't overlook anything, or get completely distracted by the first exciting thing I came across.

  And sure enough by the time I was finished I'd made one big discovery, and learned a little more about the ptop and its OS. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard of before, and I had a feeling it was probably unique. I was sure there was nothing else like it, right down to the silicon. Same with its operating system, although at least it was familiar enough that I'd been able to find my way around it from the start.

  There were a few peculiarities, like some basic commands were missing or had different names than I was used to. Over-all though it was simir enough to various unix-based systems that I was comfortable with it. It still seemed weird that the thing cked any sort of GUI, considering it had a trackpad and mouse buttons. They appeared to be completely unused though, since it was limited to the command line interface.

  The most exciting thing I'd found was a sort of text-based e-reader app called Codices. And that was the first thing I opened after completing my search, because that's where all the documentation was hiding.

  The list of titles included oddly-named manuals for all the editor applications, along with a few other guides. There was even something called "The SysAdmin Handbook" which I had a feeling was going to contain more mind-blowing revetions about the nature of our reality.

  Needless to say I had a lot of reading to do, so I undocked the ptop and took it over to my bed where I stretched out and got comfy. Then I opened up the document titled "Character Editor: RTFM" and got started.

  I soon lost track of time as I read through page after page of detailed information. The guide never really expined how the ptop worked exactly, but it said enough that I could make some basic assumptions. Like none of the character data was actually stored on the little pink computer. When it loaded a character's information that came from somewhere else, and when changes were saved the data was written back out to wherever it came from.

  That external location could have been some super-computer running reality behind the scenes, or it's possible our bodies were the 'hardware' and the ptop wrote to us directly. Either way it didn't really matter, the point was the information was always loaded and saved in real-time.

  That was important because it meant there was no way to roll-back changes, and no backup to restore from. Or in other words, even if the three of us wanted to revert to our original bodies there was no easy way to do so. The only option would be to manually revert things, assuming we could remember every st number and detail we'd changed in the first pce.

  The ck of an 'undo' option also drove home the point that we needed to be very careful with any changes we made in the future.

  Fortunately the manual wasn't all dire warnings and bad news. It also contained lots of useful information too. Like how to access character sheets of people who weren't close enough to come up on the local search screen. More importantly the documentation expined how to safely and easily navigate character sheets to get to whatever information I desired.

  That was actually a little freaky, like just how much data was avaible through that interface. Not just physical stats but mental ones too. Actually it was more than just numbers, literally everything about a person was accessible through the editor, if you dug deep enough.

  There was even a 'character history' section that basically let you review a person's entire life. It was broken down a few different ways for ease of use, like you could look through highlights or life-changing moments, or search by date if you wanted to find out what the 'character' did or what they remembered from that point in time.

  The most terrifying thing I learned from that section was the fact that as a root-level SysAdmin I had read-write access to that part of the character editor. Which meant I could literally add, change, or delete people's memories. Which was yet another reason not to let anyone else near the ptop anymore.

  Moving away from the horrible stuff I made a point of seeing what the manual had to say about the Notes field that I used to make those tweaks to myself, and did the fake hypnosis stuff with Gwen this morning.

  Fortunately it turned out we'd basically been using it correctly, which was a bit of a relief. It was for making minor short-term adjustments to characters' behaviours or thought patterns. According to the guide those tweaks would change or fade in a few days, but it mentioned some other parts of the editor and suggested using those instead if the adjustments were meant to be permanent.

  I made a note of that before I continued reading, since I definitely didn't want my recent improvements to fade. I'd also have to check in with Chelsea, to find out if she wanted her personality adjustments to be permanent too.

  In all it took me about forty-five minutes to get through the first manual, and I only made one more interesting discovery by the time I got to the end. I figured out how to override all those 'locked' options, so if I wanted to I could access non-human species and other csses. So maybe Gwen could become the elven mage she wanted from the start.

  Before moving on to the next manual I decided to open up the character editor, so I could try out some of that stuff I'd just learned. That way I could make sure I'd understood the instructions correctly, and familiarize myself with those new features.

  I loaded up my character sheet first, then like the guide suggested I moved my mental instructions out of the Notes field and into the correct section so they'd become a permanent part of my personality.

  Then out of curiosity I navigated to the 'history' section, because I wanted to check something. If the ptop somehow got me and the original Lisa confused, I wanted to know if it would list my history or hers. As far as I knew I didn't have anyone else's memories in my head, but the situation was weird enough I wanted to be sure.

  A few seconds ter I found the data, and realized how weird it really was to see at all the highlights of my life listed on the screen in bck and white. And it was my life, my history. I was AMAB, raised by my single mom until she moved in with Edward when I was nine. Then it was me and mom and Chelsea and Ed until mom died when I was thirteen. And since then I'd been stuck with Edward. There was no mention of the names Lisa or Annalise until yesterday.

  "Weird," I frowned. "So the ptop thought I was Lisa, but merged her body with my mind and memories?"

  "No," I shook my head a moment ter as I realized my mistake.

  Lisa's physical stats matched my original body when I first opened the editor. I was the one who changed 'her' into a cute pink-haired girl while I was messing around, before I realized what the ptop was capable of. Which meant I never actually saw the original Lisa's stats. From the moment I got into the character editor it was just showing me my own data under her name.

  That left me wondering who the real Lisa was, or if she ever existed at all. Except the ptop had to come from somewhere. Same with the name Annalise Summernd, because I sure as heck wouldn't have come up with that myself.

  Unfortunately there weren't any more answers in there, so I finally navigated out of my file and opened Gwen's next. Then after unlocking the options I went straight to the species field to see what I'd find.

  Instead of 'human' plus eleven 'locked' options the drop-down had changed. And rather than just twelve choices it now had page after page of possibilities. There were species I recognized from mythology, others from fantasy, some came from science fiction, and still more I didn't recognize at all. In fact the list seemed to go on forever. I did spot 'elf' in there, and when I selected it I was presented with another drop-down list for selecting which kind or variant or sub-species.

  I didn't know which one Gwen wanted, but I wasn't going to save any of this anyways so I picked one at random. That in turn opened to a details page which listed a bunch of species-specific options, and by that point it seemed like there really were endless possibilities. On the other hand it meant my best friend would probably get her wish, she could be whatever kind of elf she dreamed of.

  So I exited her character sheet for now, but before quitting the editor entirely there was one more thing I wanted to try. One more character I wanted to look at.

  Using what I learned from the manual I put in Edward's full name, then his date of birth. Sure enough the ptop was able to find his character ID, and a moment ter I had his data on the screen in front of me. I wasn't going to mess with him, but there were a few things I wanted to look at.

  The data described Ed more or less exactly like I expected. Forty-nine years old, brown eyes, short greying brown hair and a bushy brown moustache. He was a hundred and eighty-eight centimetres tall, strong and muscur build, with an extra twenty or thirty pounds of middle-aged spread on him.

  His primary css was a level four architect, which made sense. He worked for a big architectural firm, and from my understanding he wasn't exactly one of their top people. He was basically just one of their average rank and file employees, the guy they sent out to do the tedious location work because nobody else wanted to go. Although he always acted like it was a big deal.

  I quickly got bored of the physical data so I navigated down to what I actually wanted to see. A few seconds ter I was looking at his personality information, and that pretty much matched what I knew about the guy. He was short-tempered, selfish, violent, and abusive, and he tended to bme other people for his failures and disappointments. And just to round things out he was misogynistic and queermisic too.

  The data also confirmed what Chelsea said st night, that the man dreamed of being a rich and famous sports hero but had to settle for trying to live that dream vicariously through his kid. Except as far as he was concerned that got screwed up too, when his first wife gave him a daughter and his second wife's son turned out to be a 'scrawny whiney wimp'.

  All that stuff set my nerves on edge, and left me with a couple uncomfortable questions. Hopefully I'd find the answers in his life history, so that's where I looked next. Being thirty years older than me meant there was a lot more on his sheet than mine, but I knew how to organize it to make it easier to find what I was looking for.

  It only took another minute or so for me to find it, and when I did I felt a cold chill run down my spine. Then as I stared at those lines of data my blood began to boil.

  PurpleCatGirl