Note: This is a preview of a full 34-page story available at sellfy.com/p/Ys7Y which you can download DRM-free for $4.

Update: This is now part of an anthology on Amazon as an eBook. You can get it here.

There are 5 sections in the full work, each with a different day and transformation. My idea with this piece is a stream-of-thought journal that’s popular on some ‘new media’ sites (like Buzzfeed, Thought Catalogue, Elite Daily, etc), with a more personal and confessional tone. This was fun to write and could certainly be something I come back to and extend later. It certainly seems our main character is “into this.” If this does well, it will certainly encourage me produce more longer stories like it.

Thanks!

chz

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Introduction & First Thoughts

We sent our RoguePress Arts & Culture editor Kaela Shanye to test out the Magi app for 5 days, with 5 different ‘morphs’ that were popularized by its users. The Magi App, launched only a few months ago, is disrupting the Magician-Studio world allowing users to morph themselves, friends, and (ahem) romantic partners in almost unlimited ways.

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I remember first hearing about Magi just a few months ago at once of those swanky rooftop parties I always dreamed I’d get invited when I was still in college. I imagined at those parties we’d talk nobly about philosophy, the arc of human achievement, but mostly it is about so and so’s new job, apartments we saw for sale, and who might be having a baby. But they are on rooftops and we’re drinking cocktails instead of cheap beer out of a red cup so progress has been made somewhere.

In any case, here’s the summary: Normally when you want to ‘morph’ your body magically, you need to visit a Magic Studio, or find someone else who can do it ‘freelance.’ As anyone into that lifestyle can tell you, finding a quality morpher is expensive. The equipment costs a lot of money as does the training and knowledge. There are ‘DIY Clubs’ that some enjoy, but for those who’re more interested in the results of magic than the mechanics behind it, monthly studio costs can be pretty high and hours can be limited.

Enter the Magi. Apparently this company stores a ‘totem’ from each user where it can be accessed digitally, allowing any change to be requested, scheduled, and executed, via a mobile app. All you need to do is visit a local magic studio and ask them to digitize you and send them over to Magi. While you might expect the studios to resist something this disruptive, the company behind Magi, Arcane Technologies or “ArcTech” also provides a lot of the equipment at little cost in exchange for participating in the program. Skilled Magicians can even submit their own morphs to the app marketplace and get paid every time a user tries one. The result has been a relatively seamless adoption of new technology as a major mover comes in to the magical morph world.

But what really sets this apart is the app. Either from a web browser or mobile phone, a user can manage and schedule their ‘morphs’ and even share their key with friends, allowing someone else to control what sort of body & shape you might be in.

Getting myself digitally catalogued and uploaded was pretty trippy. My local Magic Studio, granted this is in a big city, charges a monthly membership of $249, but offers digitization for just a one-time $59 through Magi. Essentially I was told to lay down on a table and a big plastic dome was placed over me.

Then, I was … it’s hard to say. As I was told, my body and consciousness are converted to Magical Information or “Maginfo” according to the industry jargon, and then stored digitally so I could be restored later on. This is, actually, a fairly common practice at magic studios.

But the effect was that I was on a cold table, and I essentially felt myself evaporate. In a matter of seconds it was like I went from existing to just not existing. And for the ten minutes or so while I was backed up to Magi’s servers, I indeed did not exist.

Magi then created a digital body for me in the local studio. I was actually just a six inch tall girl displayed on a computer monitor, but my consciousness was tied to that digital form, so it felt like being inside a terrarium with only one window. Storing myself digitally like this, the magician explained, was pretty standard and a lot of clients would use it to virtually ‘test’ out different morphs before trying them. Although, he also confessed this was no longer necessary with the new app taking things over.

I was shortly re-instated in my corporeal body, and the magician had me finish setting up my Magi account. Now, I was ready to start morphing…

Only, of course, there would be one more hitch:

I wouldn’t be the one picking out the bodies.

For that element, we turned to Eliana Butaryi, brand ambassador for Magi and experienced morpher herself.

Eliana met me at a local cafe after I’d been digitized, and I handed over my digital key into her hands.

Well let’s back up. Before we go any further, let’s talk about Eliana’s morph that she’d ‘applied.’ (Is that what Magi users say? I don’t know. Should I know?)

Eliana did not have a head. She had in fact ‘traded it in’ for another pair of arms.

See, here’s where you just need to dive in — people like Magi for all kinds of reasons, but one fact is that some people like to make themselves smaller, and others like to add extra parts. To balance everything out, Magi works on it’s own ‘Mana’ system where, when a user is reduced, their extra “magical energy” or ME as it is boringly referred to in the industry, is shared by other users.

So, a hypothetical: Jill wants four arms. However, to get four arms, someone, either her or someone else, needs to give her two arms or she has to turn something else into those arms with roughly the same ME. So if she takes Jack’s arms or her own legs, she can get four arms. It works this way at a studio or through the App, but in the case of the App, they can access the unused ME of all the users who are smaller than normal somehow.

Fortunately, plenty of users seem to enjoy that aspect, so there is lots to go around. But to encourage this, Magi let’s users accumulate “mana points” in this way, which can later be spent on exclusive ‘content’ or adding on extra parts.

Anyway. Technical stuff over. Eliana had opted for an extra pair of arms, identical to her existing arms, and coming from about halfway up her torso.

But to get those she had given up her head. This is not a trade that would occur to me, but that’s why I’m the novice here.

This might be an impediment to things like, life and stuff, except that Eliana still had a face to see, hear, and speak from. It was flat on her chest, positioned provocatively with her mouth right above her cleavage. She wore a loose fitting top with extra arm holes added.

“At first glance,” she told me while somehow sipping a coffee that I expect I’d manage to pour down my shirt if I was in her shape, “the appeal of morphs is adding something you don’t have. Extra arms, legs, a pair of wings, a second head… But if everyone did it, the ME sharing wouldn’t work. But there’s also something oddly interesting about morphs that limit someone, and let’s be frank here — we’re talking about the bedroom — you can really make some interesting shapes to play with.”

“Is that what you have planned for me?” I asked. Were we going to talk about my romantic life now?

“No,” she laughed. “At least not at first. We can do some of the basics, the more popular morphs that our users have picked. A lot of them will use one limited form to build up mana points, then spend those on an extravagant body for a weekend. But more often than not, a user will try and stay close to zero. What’s very interested in that about 50% of the transactions on the side are just user-to-user trades of body parts. A friend trying on her friends legs, or a girlfriend and boyfriend swapping bodies. So many users don’t even play the game of going up and down.”

“And,” she added, “We’re finding those users especially are not previously clients of magic studios, which is the most exciting part.”

I don’t remember what I said next because I was too busy drooling over the idea of more than a few bodies I suddenly wanted to borrow.

In any case, I send my digital key over to Eliana and allowed her full access to my totem for the week. Each day she would set a timer for 12 hours and I would be stuck that way from 8am to 8pm. I could have the evenings to be myself, or use the app for my own stuff if I wanted.

So that was all this morning. It’s now 11pm and I’m finishing this article. I haven’t used any of the morphs on the app just yet, so tomorrow we’ll see what becomes of me.