"This app, on Laura's phone," he said. "Had little 3D models, a bunch of sliders, seemed a little like a video game character creator. I played around with Greg, and gave him a bunch of muscles. But, when I hit 'Accept', it didn't start the game. Stuff... changed."
Vanessa sized him up, brow furrowed, searching for any hint of deceit.
"What do you mean, 'stuff changed?'" she asked.
"This morning, Laura was my best friend, Greg wasn't even the biggest guy at the local gym, and you had never picked up a comic book in your life. It's like the changes on the phone became... real," Jason said.
Vanessa's lips pulled further inward as she shot him an obviously doubtful look, as if waiting for the punchline to drop.
"I think I made Greg 6' 6" and around 480 lbs. What... what do he and Laura look like now?" Jason asked, hunting for a way to prove his sincerity.
Vanessa raised an eyebrow at the question, and opened up Instagram on her phone. She scooted close, leaning thoughtlessly into Jason's personal space to show him the screen. He tensed, anxiety and excitement stirring as his long-time crush draped herself across his side as if she belonged there.
The Greg posing triumphantly on Instagram was identical to the one Jason had so thoughtlessly created minutes before. Thick, rippling muscles flowed across his frame, exploding into juicy, cut slabs of beef etched with deep striations. He wore nothing but a pair of bright red posing trunks, arms raised into the most massive double-bicep in human history. Nothing about Greg's new build was restrained. Every muscle exploded desperately outward, fighting desperately for space. He had grown from a fairly competent amateur bodybuilder to a cut, comically-sized mass monster.
And standing next to him, arms flexed into a double-bicep of her own, was Laura. His waifish, flat-chested, best friend was gone. A deep, rippling six-pack cut deep into her torso, running from the bottom of her baby blue sports bra down to a pair of matching bikini bottoms. Tree trunk legs jutted out of the bottoms, each thicker around than old Laura's torso, and bulging with power. Her biceps rose to the sky with peaks bigger than any male bodybuilder Jason had ever seen.
The caption of the post shed some more light on the changes:
Weigh-in day! Lil' sis and I have been packing on the pounds, and we're about to put everyone else on notice:
Me:
480 lbs
6' 6"
Lil' Sis:
280 lbs
5' 4"
Jason looked at Vanessa, then back at the phone. He flipped through Greg's Instagram, watching in reverse order as Greg and Laura packed on pound after pound of ridiculous size and definition. The photos went on for years, a whole new reality.
"Greg is exactly what I thought he'd be. But... Laura wasn't supposed to be affected," Jason said.
"You've pulled some crazy pranks on me in the time we've been dating," Vanessa said. "Forgive me if I'm slow to hop on the 'Jason accidentally changed reality' train."
Jason's head swam. She was more than his friend. More than just a fellow comic nerd. He and Vanessa... This new reality couldn't be so kind, could it?
"How... how long have we been dating?" Jason asked.
"What do you mean? You're the one who corrects me every time I get it wrong," Vanessa shot back.
"Humor me," Jason said.
"Somewhere around... two years," she answered.
As she said the number, Jason's head swam. Information slotted into place. Not overwriting his old life, but filling in alongside. Slipping into the house past two walls of muscle, comics clutched in hand as he tromped up the stairs to Vanessa's room. Weekends spent at comic conventions, gazing longingly at her as she strode confidently through the crowds dressed as Power-Girl, Wonder-Woman, Black Widow, and more. Finally working up the courage to ask his long-time crush to senior prom, only to have the wind pulled from his sails when she left a note in the back of a paperback he borrowed asking him. A whole life lived, but not, fitting in alongside the one he remembered.
"Two years, five months, twelve days," he said unconsciously, then startled at the new information he had spouted.
"Today just keeps getting weirder," he lamented.
Vanessa sized him up, taking in the abject confusion on his face, and trying to reconcile it with the boyfriend she'd always known. Could still be a prank, but Jason was a terrible actor. In all the time she'd known him, she could count on one hand the number of times he'd taken a joke too far. Each time had ended in instant, profuse apologies as he'd tried to set things right, and hurried reassurances from her that she was not as upset as he expected. He'd earned enough trust for her to see where this went.
"So, let's say, you did spin us off into a new Multiverse this morning. Is there any way we could know definitely that this Crisis on Infinite Earths you think you've caused is real?" Vanessa asked.
Jason sighed in relief. A chance to prove himself. He considered his options. The phone disappeared after he clicked accept, but if they found it, the app might still be there.
"If there's any proof, it would be on Laura's phone," he said. "If we can get our hands on it, we could at least sanity check, right? I... I would love to be wrong about this, but I need to know."
Vanessa thought about it for a minute. Could they get their hands on Laura's phone?
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