It was a beautiful spring day as Brad and Karen rocked on the front porch glider. They had just finished a very strenuous day working on their newly acquired farm. Brad smiled at his wife as she leaned her head on his shoulder. The farmhands had just left for the day, leaving them alone to rest and enjoy the sunset.
"I didn't expect it to be so much work, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.", said Karen. "That bull continues to be a problem though. I don't like the way he looks at me during milking time with the cows. The farmhands assure me that he won't jump or break through the fence, but he still makes me nervous."
"Ole' Max wouldn't hurt a fly.", said Brad. "You're just being paranoid. I walked through that pasture and he didn't charge me or run me through with his horns. He's really gentle once you get to know him."
After the sun dipped below the horizon, the sounds of the farm died down and the cricket's started their repetitious chorus. The couple headed inside the house to prepare dinner and turn in for the night. They were half way through preparing dinner when the lights in the house suddenly turned off.
"Damn breaker tripped again! I think it's your turn to go check it out.", said Karen as she nudged her husband toward the door.
Brad sighed as he went to find the flashlight and made his way out toward the storage shed at the side of their old farmhouse. The shed was clustered with many odds and ends from years past. He hadn't really had time to go through everything and he didn't want to just haul it away as junk. Some of the items in there might be worth a lot, or might make a nice addition in their new house. The house was still lacking when it came to furniture and decorations. They moved from a small apartment and didn't really have a lot of belongings to personalize their new home.
Brad aimed the light toward the breakers, noticing one of them had actually tripped again. As he got closer to the panel, he bumped into a large box, causing it to tip over sideways, revealing an odd door and wall panel. After restoring power, he walked over to examine the newly revealed area.
"This old shed was so crammed full of items, I never noticed that it had extra storage behind it.", thought Brad as he walked closer. The door was slightly ajar, and the panel looked out of place among all the antiques and junk strewn about the room. It was metallic and had a small screen along with a number pad on the interior wall. Pressing the pad didn't have any effect as the system did not seem to be powered. After moving a few more items out of the way, he opened the door and peered inside.
The flashlight showed the contents of a decent sized room that was free from any kind of floor clutter. He searched the walls, looking for any kind of light source and found a switch close to the door. Light flooded the room, revealing a curious set of controls along one of the walls and a rather large booth in the corner of the room. Various mechanical devices lined the wall on the opposite side from the controls.
"This must be Uncle Jack's workshop. I wondered why all his tools appeared to be missing. He must have spent a lot of time in here to get away from everything and keep his inventions secret!" He noticed a rather large bookcase with countless binders and books. "Karen needs to see this!"
Excited as a child on Christmas morning, Brad ran into the house to retrieve Karen. "Come with me! I found something amazing!", he said as he took her hand, leading her outside toward the shed.
As Karen entered the room, she let out an audible gasp. "So this is Jack's workshop! I bet you'll have a blast tinkering with all this equipment. It could certainly use some dusting though.", she said as she wiped dust off a nearby shelf with her finger. "Still, it's in pretty good shape considering it hasn't been used for months."
Karen walked over to the booth and picked up a binder off the table. Wiping the dust from the jacket revealed the title of the book, "Transformation Booth Operators Manual ver 3.25"
"Well, well... What kind of mad scientist stuff is this?", said Karen with a chuckle. A small switch beside the book, once flipped on, brought the control panel to life. The screen lit up with many different options... Scan Subject, Transform Subject, were two of the words that stood out. "Really, a transformation device? I think your uncle was getting a little senile in his old age."
Brad walked over to a circled area on the floor near the booth. As he stepped onto the circle, the floor lit up and the screen beeped. Some distant mechanism whirred to life as he stood there surprised.
"Hey look! It's scanning you. Maybe it's going to make a clone of you.", teased Karen after she noticed the words "Scanning" on the monitor. Moments later, the screen read, "Scanning complete. Human Male profile #1 successfully stored." Karen's curiosity had peaked as she began to flip through the manual.
Brad, laughed a bit and cautiously opened the door to the booth. As the door opened, a bright light turned on, showing a fairly simple booth with a small control panel on the side. Aside from some papers strewn about on the floor, it was fairly featureless. The walls appeard to be made out of some kind of metal, and a large round dome protruded from the ceiling about 2" in diameter and 1" deep. Brad leaned down to pick up the papers as Karen continued to mess with the control panel. She was never one for reading a manual. She began entering commands into the control panel, marveling at the sophisticated prank that Brad's Uncle was playing on them from beyond the grave. Once the parameters were all complete, she sprang up and shut Brad into the booth.
"So, we're going to test out this "Transformation Booth!", teased Karen. In a few minutes, my handsome husband is going to become a primate for 24 hours.", she said after sticking out her tongue and moving back to the control panel.
Brad chuckled and played along with his wife. He began making monkey sounds which got a chuckle out of Karen. As she pressed the button, the window to the booth's door slammed closed and a distant machine began to hum. Karen jumped at the noise caught off guard by the suddenness of the window shutting. As she walked toward the door, the humming stopped and the door opened a crack.
She heard Brad still making monkey noises as she got closer to the door. "Wow, those sound a lot more realistic than before. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the machine worked. My turn to...", said Karen as she opened the door. A loud gasp escaped her lips as she noticed the very confused monkey sitting on the floor, examining it's body.
"What kind of joke is this? Okay, where are the cameras. Nice try Brad! You really had me going there for a second.", said Karen with a bit of concern in her voice.
The monkey looked at Karen and shook it's head. It exited the booth, jumped onto the table, picked up the operation manual and began to... READ?
"B... B... Brad?", said Karen with a look of concern.
The monkey nodded rapidly at her and pointed toward the book. The monkey's gestures seemed more human than animal and the expression on it's face resembled her husband too closely to be a coincidence. Karen sat there frozen as the monkey, formerly her human husband, made his way over to view the screen.
The top of the screen read...
Subject: Human
Subject Gender: Male
Target Species: Primate - Spider Monkey
Target Gender: Male
Transformation Time:Instant
Default Parameters
Target bodies parameters are compatible with the booth's size.
Duration: 24 hours
Karen pulled up a more comfortable chair from the corner of the room and pulled it up to a desk where she plopped down the operation guide. “Honey, don’t worry. We’ll find a way to turn you back, I promise. For now, Let’s go ahead and examine this operation manual, then we’ll see what kind of food I can feed you."
"OOOOOO OOOOOO EEEEEEK!", exclaimed Brad as he tried to say words but failed miserably.
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