I awoke with a growling stomach. I have never been so ravenously hungry, so I jumped out of bed and just ran to the kitchen, where I started devouring everything I could lay my hands on. After several minutes my stomach's complaints subsided and it started to digesting my bounty.

At that point I became aware of several pairs of eyes watching me. Two pairs were watching my face. One pair was looking at something below my face, so I looked down to see what that was but I couldn't see anything. There were these things in front of me blocking my view, so I took a step sideways to look around those things hanging there to see what was so interesting. Hmmm. These things move sideways with me, like they're stuck on me. I felt that movement in ways not so familiar. And they’re made out of pink skin where it was not covered with my shirt. Wait a minute here! That were breasts. My breasts. They were sticking to my sleeping shirt. And Tom's eyes were glued to them.

"Tom, if you like looking at breasts, I'm sure these people can grow some on you!"

His eyes snapped so hard upwards I thought they would keep spinning in the socket

"That's better," I said but still covered the eye candy with my arm.

"Andy, I see you have blossomed overnight," observed Elise with a very good poker face. "All that blossoming can make a person go hungry, right?"

"You can say that again. I was starving."

"Maybe you should go back to your room and freshen up now your hunger is sated."

"Right, good idea. I'll get right on it," I responded while walking quickly to my room. That was one weird way of waking up. The second I was in my room and closed the door, I of course start patting down my body. Man, things can change quickly. Next stop, bathroom mirror! I ran towards the mirror to see my sister standing there. A really pretty version of my sister. A body with all the right curves, shoulder length raven hair and my sister’s face where somebody pressed the enhance button several time. That perfect body site really does deliver. Except one thing. I could see all my ribs and seemed to be really underweight. That quick change really took it out of me. Well, except for the breasts. It’s like most of the fat on my body was moved to these two assets. I decided it was my sister’s fault for wanting large breasts as her ideal body. I checked the design for that.

“I thought I’d find you there”

“Gaaah!!”

“Easy there. Any more staring in the mirror and your eyes are going to fall out.”

“Elise, you startled me.”

“Sorry about that. I thought you could use some company. Actually, I was expecting more panic accompanied by you holding your new breasts screaming whyyyy.”

“I knew this moment was coming, Elise. I did my panicking quietly on the boat.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.

“You had your transformation set to max, right? You did, otherwise you wouldn’t be such a lightweight right now. It takes several thousands of calories to complete and It makes you really tired. ”

“Say Elise, am I shorter now?”

“Yes, you lost above an inch. You can check in your vital statistics.”

I opened the screen. She was right. Minus 1.4 inch and minus twenty pound.

“Dang. And I lost a lot of weight. Where did it all go?”

“Usually it goes to evaporation, exhaling and sweating it out.”

“Eeeeuuuw. That's why the bed and shirt still felt so sticky. I thought this stuff was self cleaning.’

“Not when you sweat something like a pounds of waste products. It takes time. This isn't magic you know.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You'll feel better after a shower. I'll find some other clothes.

“Sounds good. I'll see you later.”

With that, I closed the bathroom door and started the task of washing this continuously changing body. It was like a rushed version of puberty, again. It was time for a bit more investigation.

Those wider hips made clear why my behind felt so sore this morning. The continued itching on my chest was also easily explained. There were still two things growing there. I was smaller now. I had to reach just a bit further now to pick up the towel, to wash my hands. My little Andy was now gone. My systems says the last details of the conversion is done in two hours.

I washed to get rid of all the stickiness, tried to deal with longer hair that grew overnight and ignored most of how I looked now. After cleaning up, I noticed that on the dresser there were some new clothes with a virtual label floating above it. It read: "Andy, some new garments that will fit better after this night. Elise." That sneaky woman. It was a T-shirt, skirt, panties and bra, all in the usual material they use. I didn't know if I should be glad or angry.

Time to get dressed. With the loss of my little guy, it was less of an issue of an issue to wear panties. I always said boys need to dress like boys and girls like girls and I stand by my word. That bra on was also becoming a necessity. But it didn't really look like the normal bra I'm used to from my extensive research in pornography. It did look like a bit like sport bras from the commercials. I thought these things were supposed to be tight but this was more like a short T-shirt.

In the end, I pulled it over my head and got it somewhat settled over my growing bumbs. That's when the bra-shirt begun shrinking! It shrunk until it way the perfect tightness comfortably cradling my new growths. A screen popped up to control my new bra. It had settings for tightness, cup size adjustments and activate support, besides just changing back to a T-shirt mode so I could take it off. One size fits all. I set the bra to full comfort. I can still change it later if needed.

Over that, I just pulled on the T-shirt, shorts and sandals. More screens popped up. After setting the shorts to jeans print, and a simple band logo for the T-shirt, I closed the screens.

Now squeaky clean, I exited the room and joined James, Elise and Tom in the kitchen, fashionably late.

"Morning Andy," Tom said while giving me a strange look.

I joined them at the table where another plate of fruits was waiting for me. I really need to reprogram that food system. I had a craving for pancakes.

[*ding*]

[Mental note added to list: “reprogram food system”.]

When I finished my plate, James said: "We're all going to the gym today for some light practice. It will help you guys with developing your coordination. I'm sorry to say but your coordination is about at the same level as a young child from around here. Don't give me that look, I'm being polite about it. We're not it going to do heavy exercise so Andy can keep up. Quick cellular regeneration is quite draining."

Tom tried to look crestfallen and said: "But I wanted to try out these babies," while flexing his biceps.

Hmm, that looked good on him.

James just chuckled and responded: "You'll learn soon enough, young grasshopper." He did that with a perfect Japanese accent. That was eerie.

We quickly cleaned up the dishes and went out. We took the stairs from the porch to ground level. This was the first time we went to ground level. It was beautiful. Walkways meandered between the trees, with thousands of flowers bordering the paths. Some of those trees were softly glowing in the shade of the trees. The paths themselves were made of wood in different patterns.

Tom and I slowly followed James and Elise while gawking like tourist. Other people were gawking at us too. I guess they don't get a lot of the tourists here. We were on the outskirts of what passes for a town here, but there was still a lot of foot traffic.

A lot of people did looked like supermodels. Most women were really beautiful, but the men look like they were sculpted by master artists. There were also some alternative people. A few women had leaves and flowers growing from their skin. Some guys had something like bone plates and spikes. Still others has parts with scales and some had fur. It’s like having animal traits was the current fashion trend. Although that one couple did have skin that was remarkably similar to shiny rubber.

Animals were walking and flying around us, totally ignoring the humans walking around, but when I saw the lion coming from behind the tree I was ready to run and Tom looked like he would be right behind me.

"Don't be afraid," Elise said and giggled. Your IFF has already told the lion you're a registered friendly.

"IFF? Oh, friend or for identification! We have that? The lion has that too?" Tom exclaimed panicky. "And, by the way, are lions not extinct?"

"Oh, they were extinct. Just not for very long," James said grinning.

"We see it as our duty to repair all the damage humanity caused," Elise said. "It kind of is our religion now."

"And that’s what we do here." James was really serious about this. “We're using our knowledge of genetics to bring back a lot of plants and animals, even invent new ones. It's a very rewarding occupation.”

"Will you bring back American animals too?" I asked quietly.

"Of course. It's part of our long-term plan and you’re part of it. We'll have to discuss that later. We have arrived.”

I hadn't noticed we continued walking and were now at a sort of building. It were multiple trees that joined their canopies to form a large covered open area, with various field and equipment underneath, surrounded with netting made from living vines.

"Welcome to the gym," James said with obvious proud while Elise rolled her eyes.

"Let me guess. Your design grew that place here," Tom asked.

James gave him a brotherly sideways hug and said happily "Glad to see you're learning. We'll make you a botanic warrior yet."

Tom's ego was visibly swelling at the mention of warrior and was already heading towards the entrance.

I arched an eyebrow towards Elise and she just shrugged, mouthed "boys" to me and followed them in.

~o~O~o~

It became clear very fast that they were not expecting a lot from us. We walked past the rack with weights where some people were casually tossing around dumbbells like they were toys. There were men and women so big and muscled that they would make the average gorilla cower.

We ended up in the game room for a round of darts, far away from the men with their big glistening muscles.

"Tom, Andy, we're going to practice some eye hand coordination. Hey guys, stop ogling the women."

I snapped my head around to look back at a slightly annoyed James.

"As I was saying, we’re going to do a few friendly matches to gauge how fast you improve."

"But I always lose with this stuff," I complained.

"We'll see," James said with a half-grin while he handed me three darts. "I'll let you go first. Just do some practice shots."

I just shrugged and threw the first dart. Of course the first dart completely mist the board and hit the wood behind it.

"Tom, stop laughing."

The second dart at least hit the board, followed by some sarcastic applause from my supporters.

Dart number three was at least somewhat in the direction of the center.

"I told you, I'm not good at this."

"No problem," James remarked, gathered the darts and handed them to Tom. "Your turn."

Tom's first dart hit the wall. He glared at me while I tried very hard to keep from smiling. I noticed a virtual screen hovering in front of James with data appearing. I quick look during Tom's second throw and saw the speed, distance from center and a bunch of other data appear.

"More test data? Should I feel like a guinea pig?" I asked him.

"We do like to see how you're doing and how the process works on blanks. Around here, everybody basically grew up with the augmented coordination. By the way, your turn to throw."

“Blanks?” I asked?

“People without established software ecosystems or neural extensions,” James explained. “Like you.”

“It feels demeaning,” I mumbled.

“You’ll get there,” Elise comforted me.

Tom and me ended up doing a dozen sets in friendly competition. We did get a lot better with a little practice, hitting closer to the bullseye.

"James, why don't you play? It doesn't seem fair to let us do all the work," Tom teased.

James just smirked and took the darts. After a quick glance to Elise, he threw the first dart to her. She just plucked it out of the air and threw the dart where it stuck at the top of the bullseye. Then James quickly threw the two other darts to Elise at the same time. She plucked them out of the air, one in each hand and threw them at the board simultaneously, where they stuck on the bottom left and bottom right of the bullseye, forming a perfect triangle.

We were starting slack jawed at the scene. "Are you ninja's?" I managed to squeak out.

"Of course not," Elise said smiling. "We just have a bit more practice. But from the data it’s clear your extended visual and motor cortex are developing nicely."

"You mean we can do that too?" Tom asked eagerly. "Or only after years of training?"

James checked his data. "Your aim should be as good in 54 more games. For ambidexterity you need to do all this once with the other hand and then with both hands. Let’s try to reach that by the end of the day."

"Let's get started!" Tom yelled before grabbing the darts. He sure was eager to learn that little trick.

"Guys, have fun. I'm going to the bathroom. See you later."

I had to go, but also really needed to adjust my clothes a bit. I wasn’t used to this sort of outfit and I didn't wanted to start tugging at it in front of the rest. In the bathroom I quickly got into a stall. It was nice of them to also have a western style toilet build here. Or grown here. This blending the line of biology and technology still is confusing. It was wood on the outside and what looks to be the inner lining of something like seashell on the inside of a bowl.

I was still getting used to being changed and wanted to change back. I’m afraid I’m getting already somewhat used to this new body, so I have to be quick. I already checked, but the system was still in “cooldown”. It was the polite expression for my cells melting if I tried to change now according to the help file.

So for the moment, it was sitting down. Luckily the rest of the bodily functions still worked like they're supposed to. While that was happening, I quickly checked the library Elise has given me and searched for aiming. Aiming - Archery, aiming - badminton, basketball, baseball. Ah, aiming - darts. Install, done. Now I'm ready.

When I got back, Tom was still throwing darts, so I called out “Hey Tom, can I try again?”

“Sure. Here you go. Show me what you've got. I got my aim improved to within an inch of target,” he answered smugly.

I picked up the first dart. Immediately a small screen with “calibrating” appeared with instructions to hold the darts in a few different positions. I saw James arching an eyebrow and sighing softly. He knew what's up. When the progress bar was full, an aiming target appeared and I nudged that one directly over the bullseye. An extra circle appeared over the aiming target to indicate target lock. Then I threw the dart and got a really weird feeling in my arm as the software helped guiding the muscle movements. The dart embedded itself in the board dead center. Tom's eyes bugged out for a moment before realisation came.

“You cheated!”

“Yup”

“How?”

“Aiming software from my library.”

Tom was opening his library screen, when James put his hand on Tom’s shoulders. “A man can do this without cheating,” he said.

Tom looked a bit embarrassed but nodded.

“Tom, can we continue the tests?” James asked. “Without cheating? Ignore them. Elise always cheats and uses software for everything.”

“Not everything,” she says as she approached James and kissed him. Then she sashayed away while she let her hand lingered for a moment on his lips. “Andy, let's give the boys here some room to play.”

I was a bit miffed by the remark about men and just followed Elise towards the other end of the bar where we sat down at a table.

~o~O~o~

“So, you like messing with software?” I asked Elise.

“Sure. You can spend months learning things, or a few hours tweaking a few routines and massaging neural data and you’re done. That’s when you just can’t download a package from somebody else or public repository. I prefer the easy way. James likes to take the hard way, like a man.” She made air quotes here. ” That makes him a great source of data though. He’s not alone, you have more people disliking the easy way. You also have people disliking body modifications, mind enhancement and you have people reveling in it. As long as you respect other people’s choices and you don’t hurt or annoy other people there is no issue. And we have a lot more choices than the average human.”

“But you have such a large list of programs and modifications.”

“Yeah, I’m a bit of a hoarder. Although these are my favorites. They were gifts.”

She manifested a few programs as pure crystalline figures.

“This one I got from James when we married. This one was from my best friend when -”

I wasn’t listening. These things were so beautiful and shiny. I quickly copied them and installed them.

“ - from my mother in law as a peace offeri - Hey! What did you do?”

“I just installed them.”

“You just can’t copy everything. These were gifts. Are you appdicted? I think you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

In the distance, Tom had heard the commotion and shouted “Yes you are. Your phone dies by app abuse every six months.” He then continues throwing darts.

“You know what you installed?” Elise whispered. ”One of those was for adding extra nerve clusters and even taste buds in your nether regions for more sensations during sex.”

“Oops.” Now my face was bright red. I hadn’t considered that. “Can I still cancel this?”

“Not these ones. They are a bit special. Sorry.”

“My own fault. I was a bit greedy.”

“A bit? But no harm done. We can reverse that all later. I actually wanted to ask you about those pancakes you mentioned actually. It has been ages since I had any and now that you mentioned it I’m looking forward to some. You want to help me make some?”

“Sure! But how?”

“Lets see. How do you make a pancake?”

“You take milk, and eggs. Flour and sugar. A bit of salt. Butter.”

“So you use these molecular structures.”

Molecule diagrams appeared in 3D on the table between us. Starch molecules for flour, molecules for glucose, egg proteins. There was a group with lactose and triglyceride for milk.

“First you need to figure out what happens during mixing and baking. Take the simulation software and try combinations.”

I found what she was referring to and figured out how to use it. After some time, I did get a large structure that started to resemble a small piece of pancake.

“Good work. Now the fun part begins. You should have examples of DNA and what it produces. Can you find a combination that produces the structure you just found in the simulator?”

Hesitantly I started to check the libraries and quickly got engrossed. Amazing what those little tweaks to DNA can do. I was making some serious progress and I got a decent version running in the simulator when I saw Elise studying me.

“You’re not helping. Oh. This is another test, right,” I asked.

“Yes. And you’re doing great. You were really getting into these genetics. I wasn’t expecting you to pick it up so soon.”

“This was fun. I like tinkering with this.”

“It’s funny how we all originally installed the same neural net and software but everybody seems to develop a speciality or talent. We’ve never found out why. It’s interesting to see it also happens with everybody, even when introduced at later age like you. You seem to be a bio gadgeteer.”

“Bio what?”

“Gadgeteer. It’s a term we picked up from a series of old but very good science fiction stories. They are able to create biological entities easily that for others will take a very long time. I tried the pancake recipe before but failed. You do it in two hours.”

“Two hours? I really got lost of time.”

“And that’s another defining feature.”

“Are there other types of people. I mean gadgeteer people. I mean... You know what I mean.”

“Of course. I’m a healer. When I first looked at medial diagrams and diagnostics, it just clicked. So I became a doctor. You also have devisors. Those are really good with biology, software or technology but it only works for them. They always have to keep tweaking parameters, DNA or something like that or it stops working quickly.”

“I haven’t seen any real technology.”

“Oh, there is a technology for sure. That what is now built into the your very cells is technology, and there is classic tech. All classic tech is hidden of course. With our biotech we don’t have need it in our daily life. Oh, you also have exemplars. They have a certain ideal image in their heads and their body changes to match. Very often they specialize in speed or strength. The men and women training here in the gym are often exemplars. You also have paragons, able to learn one thing really fast and excel in it, such as martial arts, music, media masters. They can do things that nobody with upgrades and modifications can match.”

“Music? Media? I haven’t seen anything like that?”

“You wouldn’t. They would play it on their own system. No boomboxes here.”

“But what kind of media you have? Memes? Youtube clips? No disrespect intended but it isn't Hollywood here.”

“Ha. Shows you what you know. Let me share something. Ready?”

“Sure. Hit me.”

And suddenly I was standing between lots of people in a fancy dress, with the sun warming me in the breeze smelling like the sea, looking down at a harbor filled with hundreds of people in old fashion clothes between very old fashioned equipment and old cars. They were all waving goodbye while the ship I was standing on was blowing it’s horn.

Then I was standing in an engine room. I could feel the heat from the furnaces and the deck vibrating beneath my feet while the huge engines were working.

Suddenly I was standing on the deck of a ship. It was freezing cold and there was an iceberg getting really close for comfort. Just before it would hit I was back in my chair in the gym, staring wide-eyed at Elise.

“What was that?!”

“A teaser trailer.”

“You serious?”

“Like I said, some people have real talent here. Immersion software writers, great artists, holographic designers and no need to work to earn food and a place to stay.”

“It makes the best Hollywood VR look like amateur hour.”

“Not bad for a few guys living in a tree house, right”

“In what kind of world did I end up in?”

“Try to finish your design, so we can test this at home.”