Jack was faced with 8 gorgeous women, wearing an average of less than the minimum amount necessary to be on any but the most liberal-minded beaches. His razor-sharp mind immediately leapt into action!
"Uh". Sigh. Where is that pull cord? *Yank!* Pt pt pt pffff. *Yank!* Pt pt pt pt PT PT pt ptt pfff. "YANK! Pt pt PT PT PT PRR PRR RRR RRRRRRRRRRRR! There we go.
"Ginger! Take everyone over to Angel's house and get them something to eat and wear. Angel, come with me!" The group giggled and squirmed in ways that -almost- made Jack change his mind, but he yanked Angel to Doc's living room.
"Whowhatwhenhowwhy?"
""I'm sorry, Master. What the hell did you just say?" Angel was honestly confused and looked so damned CUTE like that. Jack took a deep breath and tried again.
"Who are those girls, why did you put them in the box, what the hell is going on here?"
"You may want to sit down for this." Jack sat and Angel arranged herself on his lap. "Who? Well, mine was Phyllis Sherman. She was an old friend from the other end of the block. She was a lot like Miss Maddy, or, for that matter, Sally, Elizabeth, or Kim." She used the original first names of the other three women in Jack's group. It is actually a harem, but whenever he thinks that word, he gets a headache... and an erection... so has been studiously avoiding it.
"Poor old Phyllis was lonely, bored, and in poor health. We got together for tea sometimes when she was having a good day. It was quite easy to invite her over using Miss Maddy's voice, and have her sit in the living room sipping some drugged tea while she thought I was getting ready. I needed Bunny to help me get her into my old box, but once she was in it it was really easy to set the programs."
"OK" Jack interrupted. "'Set the programs'? How did you know what program to set, and why did you feel a need to do this at all?"
"Well, I don't know about the why. It was just something I was supposed to do. We all felt it and we worked together to get each of the boxes filled. As far as the how- I just used the manual." She gestured at a large red notebook on the table near a laptop.
Jack took the book and glanced through it. He was not sure what bothered him the most, the graphics that looked like a cross between IKEA furniture instructions and a well-drawn, exceptionally lurid, big-boob fetish adult comic, or the sudden realization that some company was making these boxes- not just a demented old guy in his garage.
The manual started with a 'thank you for buying this product' letter, then had a section of receiving, unpacking, and setting up the box. The next section discussed programming the box and actually using it. The other sections covered resetting the box, troubleshooting, reordering supplies, and a lot of appendi- programming codes, templates, helpful hints, a guide to choosing your first victim, and others. Jack got slightly queasy just scanning it.
However, the manual also had a large phone number prominently splashed on the front, labeled 'Customer Service Hotline'. He promptly called it.
"Special Services International. How may I help you?" A bland midwestern voice answered the phone.
"Special Services International? I thought I was calling the Secret Sexlabs Inc.?"
The voice laughed. "Sir, there is no such thing as the Secret Sexlabs, Inc. And if there was, do you think they would answer the phone that way? How may I help you?"
"Well, I have a question about some boxes."
"You mean a shipping or packing question? I can transfer you..."
"No, I mean some boxes that somehow change people."
"Ah! Yes sir. What is the make, model, and serial number of the box in question?"
"Well, I have four of them. Where would I find that stuff?"
"It is on the information plate at the foot of each box, but it should also be in the manual, printed on the inside of the front cover."
"Ah. Here it is. Midwest Transmogrification Technologies model TMMBOX-F7, serial numbers 11F77432-5493. The other three are 5494, 5495, and 5496."
"Yes sir. Dr. Eugene Demetrios? I have your records right here sir. How can I help you?"
"Well, ah, actually, I am not Dr. Demetrios. He unfortunately died and I am left with some... complications. He had a woman in each box just before he died, and now each woman put ANOTHER woman in the boxes!" Jack's voice was beginning to get a bit... excited, so Angel began stroking him to calm him down. It might have worked better if she had stroked his brow, but as she chose to stroke him much lower it did not help as much as it could have.
Jack shuddered and tried to pull himself together. He eventually managed to get out his primary issues- how to stop the boxes from being used again, how long before he had to enslave the new girls, could they be put back to the way they were before, and what the hell was he supposed to do with all this?
As the helpful voice on the phone helped him work through the issues, Jack's heart fell a bit with each point. He could prevent the boxes from being used again by just pulling the programming thumb drive from each box. (The thumb drive acted both as a key and as the way the programming was transferred from the computer to the box. When Jack mumbled something about not being Wi-Fi, the voice mentioned that the F7 series was a low-end unit.)
The 'how long' depended on a lot of things, but it was best to do the DNA priming within a couple of days ("and you understand that traditionally this happens when they are helped out of the box, right?") The window for the oral dose is another day, then one needs to finish the job within a few hours after that, but it would reset in a week or so if not activated.
"What if the person who helped them out of the tank was a girl?" The voice explained that the target would be at least partly primed to the woman, but the oral dosing would ensure that the primary target would be the semen donor. "Unless, of course, the woman in question is a Transform, in which case her DNA carries the markers of her master, so their touch actually reinforces the priming to her master." Great.
They could not be restored to their original state since Dr. Demetrios did not purchase any sort of back-up options and did not apparently even save any of his settings. The helpful voice had Jack turn to the programming codes and templates section of the manual.
"Now, you could find a template that is close to what the woman in question used to look like (and there are more templates available at a 'small cost' online), then use the programming codes to fine-tune her but as you can see, there are a lot of codes."
He wasn't kidding! The codes section was huge, in tiny print, and in four columns, and it turns out there are actually four volumes in total- just the top million or so codes are in the manual. Each code was a ten digit hexadecimal code that did something specific. There were a dozen or so codes just for eyelashes in the short version and the voice told me that there were over three hundred codes for eyelashes all total. A Template was a pre-programmed set of codes, usually well over ten million separate codes, depending on how much the design used the original DNA.
In other words, he would have to buy the full code set ("it is available in digital format", the voice helpfully suggested), find an appropriate template, spend hours and hours adjusting it- even if he actually knew the answers to most of the questions...
"There is a bit of a short-cut." The voice cut in. "There is a program you can purchase that helps. It combines a graphical interface with a sort of Q&A format to help you design your finished product. It is quite popular among users of the Transmogrification boxes. It is a bit like the famous 'Master PC' from a popular series of stories. If it would help, I could direct you to some archives..."
However, cheapskate Dr. D had only bought a basic version of it, then had recently upgraded it- but only to the next higher level, and the quoted cost made Jack start coughing. When the voice casually tossed out the costs of additional templates, coding books, and the costs of the raw materials needed, he almost had a full-on cardiac event.
"Uh..." We'll forgive him this one time. Finding out that it would cost more money than Jack would make in five years to afford even the most cut-rate version of his idea to put just one of the girls right would lock up most people's speech center. The ever-so-helpful voice continued to point out problems with Jack's plan. Did he know the original hair density? The long bone calcium ratios? Did he know the proper accent pack to install, or what their primary vocabulary list should be? Did he even know their third-level allergies? Secondary fetishes? Hell, Jack did not even know what half of this stuff meant! The girls could help with some of that, but obviously there was a lot more to this than he had thought.
The disembodied voice offered another option. Since Jack did not select the physical or mental Templates used, he could re-process the girls to new physical and/or mental settings... within the limits of the model of box and how much programming and supplies he was willing to purchase. Jack was torn between giggling and vomiting at the quoted cost. He could never come up with that kind of money.