# BodMod
Maya opened the door to Jenna’s apartment without knocking.
“Where’s my bitches at,” she called out past an empty kitchen.
There was no immediate reply. Maya set her bag down by the kitchen table and started putting away the wine and groceries she was carrying.
From the other room the sound of running water finished. The bathroom door opened and Jenna came out.
“Hey girl,” she said, grabbing Maya around the waist and planting a kiss on her cheek.
“Mmm,” said Maya. “Hello there. What’s all this?”
She gestured to the packaging strewn across the kitchen table. A plastic and aluminum loop with a coiled length of wire was sitting in the only cleared area, next to Jenna’s laptop.
“The BodMod Collar,” said Jenna excitedly. “It finally fucking came. This is the collar that works with the AI prompt tool to do body magic.”
“It looks like a raccoon got in here,” said Maya, starting to pick up stray bits of cardboard, bubble wrap, and other material and moving them to the recycling.
“I keep telling you, you can’t recycle just any old plastic,” said Jenna, snatching away the bubble wrap and moving it to the garbage.
Maya rolled her eyes.
“So we doing this thing then?” she raised an eyebrow expectantly towards Jenna.
“Oh are you on a schedule,” said Jenna, mockingly. “Just paying me a visit and then getting the fuck out?”
“I’m just saying,” said Maya, “I got a text from this wonderful friend of mine—“
She theatrically pulled out and unlocked her phone. Then she read aloud:
“`EMERGENCY ALERT: Jenna will be eating all the pussy in the world today, get over to her apartment before it's all gone.`”
Maya raised an eyebrow at Jenna, attempting to keep a straight face.
“I sent that to all my contacts, you’re not special,” said Jenna flatly.
Maya tried and failed to stifle a laugh.
“Oh my god,” she said, her face busting into a laugh. “I just thought of you rampaging through a city like Godzilla in pursuit of all pussy and this is like the emergency broadcast.”
“Yeah, that’s a normal Sunday for me,” said Jenna, smirking back at Maya.
“All I’m saying,” continued Maya, “Is I dropped everything to come over for your uh, emergency. But it seems you wanna play with your new … accessory.”
“In a manner, yeah,” said Jenna. “I mean, I can get settled first if you’re like … DEFCON-100 level thirsty for it. But I just got this thing, and I was waiting for it to ship for like four weeks, and I kind of need a —“
Jenna looked at Maya hopefully.
“A guinea pig,” said Maya, with a smirk.
“A volunteer,” said Jenna, with a grin.
“Okay,” said Maya with a shrug. “Let’s try it.”
##
30 minutes had passed. Maya had made coffee and eggs with the stuff she’d brought over from the farmers market.
Jenna had booted up her computer and started staring at a terminal, tabbing between windows and swearing under her breath.
“So,” said Maya, sipping her coffee she’d made with the French press, “This is the collar thing that Wizard Boy told you about. The one with the AI controller thing.”
“His name is Eric,” said Jenna, defensively. “You would like him if you met him.”
“Okay, but he’s the guy you talk to about magic at work, so…”
“Yes, that’s him,” said Jenna.
“So he’s Wizard-Boy,” said Maya, smirking.
“He knows a lot about this shit, and we should try to be friends with him,” said Jenna. “What the fuck does `Python version 3.4 detected, python version 3.2 or higher is required.` mean? How is that even an error?”
“You get so crabby when you’re on the computer,” remarked Maya.
“I’m just … I thought this would just work and it — oh it’s already a known issue —“
She stopped talking to read something on the screen.
“Okay,” she continued, “So we try it again, and this time with `--use_canary=true` and …”
A bunch of text started flying across the terminal.
“There,” said Jenna. “I think it’s installing now.”
“Neat,” said Maya, flatly.
“Here,” said Jenna, unlocking her phone. “We both agree WizWorks is kind of expensive, right?”
“I mean, it’s only what, $150?”
“You’ve got a real job, I’m in grad school,” said Jenna.
“We don’t have to split the cost, you know, I can just cover it,” said Maya.
“I feel bad if we do that!” said Jenna.
“I mean, I can spend $150, and then I don’t have to have arms for a weekend? And I get to be Jenna’s helpless love-slave? That’s a good deal for me.”
Jenna giggled.
“Or,” continued Maya, “I could spend that buck-fifty *once* and just not go back to get restored, then I could be your stay and home girlfriend *all the time*.”
“I need you to go out and make all the money-dollars,” said Jenna, watching the terminal mock a loading bar in ascii text.
“I spend all day on Zoom anyway, it’s not like I need arms to do that,” said Maya, sullenly.
“That’s all beside the point here,” said Jenna. “It’s not just the cost, if we can get this thing working, we can do body magic … any time we want. Here—“
Jenna unlocked her phone and brought up a photo, then handed it to Maya.
“Oh my,” said Maya. “Who’s this cute thing?”
“That’s Rona,” said Jenna. “Wizard Boy — Eric’s — wife.”
“She’s a cute little nugget-girl, that’s what she is,” said Maya, setting the phone down. “No arms, no legs, no problems. God damn, what a life.”
“Anyway,” said Jenna. “Eric told me they do that like … sounded like every night. They just get rid of her arms and legs every evening and she can just spend the night like that. Put them back in the morning.”
Maya sighed loudly. She picked up and fidgeted with the collar.
“What?” said Jenna, prying and nudging Maya’s face with her own.
“I would like to become a nugget please,” said Maya, locking eyes with Jenna. “I would like you to vanish my limbs and leave me as a trophy to your pussy-destroying conquests.”
“Great,” said Jenna, returning her attention to the computer. “Put the collar on.”
Maya fastened the BodMod collar around her neck.
“Pinches a bit,” she said.
“I saw a video where someone used some felt to soften up the edges.”
“Will that … fuck up the magic?”
“I don’t know babe, I’m learning this as I go,” said Jenna.
“Wow, that’s so confident,” said Maya.
“Look, worst case scenario here, if I fuck something up that I can’t fix, we take you over to WizWorks which is what we were going to have to do anyway--“
“No, no, keep going,” said Maya, affectionately grabbing Jenna’s arm. “Sorry, you’re trying to focus on this important task at hand and I’m distracting you.”
“Right, well, I think the first thing I do after installing it, is we calibrate the collar to our first subject -- so we create a calibration profile, and we save that as the file name `dumb_bitch_01`”
“Hey!” Interjected Maya, leaning over and pushing Jenna off the keyboard. She typed something and then leaned back.
“Sorry, yes, let’s save you as `dumb_nugget_bitch_01` how could I forget,” said Jenna, smirking at Maya. And then we go to run calibration and—“
She hit enter.
Both of them instantly felt it. Something changed in the room, a zapping, cold, shocking feeling of their reality changing around them. Atoms rearranged via quantum principles that even the top scientists in the world didn’t fully understand.
Magic had happened.
“Huh,” said Jenna, squinting. “That was weird.”
“Jenna…” said Maya, her voice rising with alarm.
Jenna was reading some text off the screen, looked sideways at Maya, and then did a double take back to her.
“Jenna what the fuck?” said Maya.
“Yeah that’s actually a really good question,” said Jenna, gasping a bit with laughter.
“Jenna—“ said Maya again. “My head is on _backwards_.”
“Before you get all mad that wasn’t what I was trying to do,” said Jenna, quickly.
“I’m —“ Maya started to laugh. “I’m not angry, okay, I’m … _backwards_.”
“All I did was run the calibration thing,” said Jenna. “It wasn’t even supposed to run a prompt yet.”
“It’s kinda neat, I can check out my own ass like this,” said Maya, leaning forward and looking down her backside.
“Okay so we’ll google ‘bodmod ai calibration’ oh look it autocompletes! ‘Bodmod ai calibration head backwards!’” said Jenna.
“Okay, well can we autocomplete my head back around,” said Maya giggling.
“Maybe we can leave you like this,” said Jenna, neutrally while she read something on the screen. “It could be your new thing. Maya with her 20-20 hindsight, princess of the I-told-you-so kingdom.”
“That’s not true, I would be the democratically elected leader of the I-told-you-so party,” said Maya.
“So apparently,” said Jenna. “We just had the collar on backwards.”
She adjusted the collar on Maya’s neck.
“Is that all? How is there even a front and back to this thing”
“Let’s see,” said Jenna.
She hit enter on the computer. There was another jolt of magic warping through the room, impossible to see the beginning or end of, but somehow taken a moment to finish.
“Okay,” said Jenna, patting Maya’s head.
“Is that … this is fixed now? I feel like I’m always going to wonder if my head is actually on straight or not now.”
“It’s close enough,” said Jenna, sarcastically. “Actually they say the reason it reverses is something about the polarity of the quantum uh… stuff, so it’s either all forwards or all backwards. Apparently this happens a lot.”
“Cool, well we can keep this in mind if you ever need to Exorcist me,” said Maya, experimentally adjusting her neck.
“Now,” said Jenna. “Let’s see what this thing can do. So I think we just type in a prompt and it’ll try some magic. So we’ll try `/transform dumb_nugget_bitch_01 has no arms`. Enter.”
There was another jolt of magic through the room, but this one lingered without resolving.
“It is working? I still have — I can’t—“
Maya attempted moving her arms, but they jerked around as if they were glitching in a video game.
“Apparently it takes a moment for the quantum thing to resolve,” said Jenna. “I read online this is why WizWorks sticks you inside a Transformalizer cause like this glitchy shit is happening, but they don’t want people to freak out about it.”
Then it was over. Maya and Jenna inspected the results.
“Um,” said Maya. “Well this is … something.”
“Oh my god I need a picture of this,” said Jenna, starting to laugh.
“I guess I don’t … technically have any arms?” said Maya.
She experimentally flexed what she did have on her shoulders — her hands. With the result of the magic now clear, her wrists were functionally fused to her shoulders, as if her arms has just retracted into her torso, but gotten stuck at the end.
“Smile for the internet,” said Jenna, snapping a photo.
“Oh my god, do not put that on insta,” said Maya rolling her eyes.
“Relax, it’s just going on linked in,” said Jenna. “Okay, so we add `no hands` to our prompt and …”
She hit enter. There was another moment of the magic crunching through the room.
“Freaky,” remarked Maya, sounding unimpressed. She wiggled her fingers. They were all that remained attached to her shoulders.
“Okay,” said Jenna, “So we say, `no arms, no hands, no fingers` and…”
She ran it again. Magic zipped and zapped around for a moment.
“There,” said Jenna, proudly regarding her handiwork, inspecting Maya’s shoulders.
“It’s not bad,” said Maya, shrugging her now-empty shoulders.
“But—“ prompted Jenna.
“But WizWorks like — smoothes them all out and stuff. These just look like I’m a photo that got cropped.”
“It’s a first try!” said Jenna.
“And WizWorks also like … does something to like, get rid of my armpits, I don’t know exactly what, but they’re like … reshaped or something.”
“But can’t you ask Wizard Boy to make me like the cute wife in the photo?” said Maya.
“Fine, I’ll text him,” said Jenna. “I feel like we’re 95% of the way there at least.”
“Okay, it’s just I want to feel armless and sexy, and not armless because I got catastrophically photoshopped.”
“Okay, I’m texting just give me a sec,” said Jenna.
She typed on her phone. A moment later she got her reply.
“Oh nice — there’s a plugin!”
She returned her attention to the computer, typing while mumbling out loud.
“Smooth stumps plugin, bodmod ai,” she narrated as she entered in the search. A moment later, back at the terminal, she was restarting the interface.
“Thank you for fixing my shoulder issue,” said Maya, smirking. “I just like the feeling like I was never supposed to have any arms at all.”
“The good news,” said Jenna, leaving over to plant a kiss on Maya’s cheek. “Is your days of having arms are very numbered.”
“I would clap with excitement, but actually,” said Maya. “No I won’t.”
“You’ll never clap again bitch,” said Jenna. “Okay — here we go — load plugin, enter the keywords `smooth_shoulders, smooth_stumps` and … let ‘er cook.”
She hit enter again. The magic hummed around for a moment.
“Oh fuck,” said Maya.
It wasn’t a bad ‘Oh fuck.’ It was a grateful, excited one.
“Yeah,” said Jenna, rubbing Maya’s two smooth, empty shoulders, shaking her back and forth by them.
“Oh fuck,” said Maya, again, more definitively, now grinning. “I love them!”
She lunged forward, planting a kiss on Jenna’s face. Jenna fumbled to get the collar off her before she dragged the computer with her, then returned the affection.
When things had calmed down for a second, Maya announced it.
“Okay,” she said, blushing. “I’m ready now.”
“Wait I was going to try your legs too.”
“Nope,” said Maya. “Too horny. Let’s do that later.”
“Okay, well then — it’s my turn first.”
Jenna took the collar and started to put it on herself.
“What are you gonna do?”
“You know what I wanna do, I want to cut my head off!” said Jenna. “Then I want to give you head, like literally give you head, as a head.”
“Okay well,” said Maya, standing up. “I’m going to go into your bedroom and struggle to undress myself.”
“I can take your clothes off for you,” said Jenna.
“No, it’s fine!” said Maya. “I want to struggle.”
She strutted away, full of confidence. Jenna tried to focus her own mind through the steps, first making sure the collar was on correctly, loading up a new profile for herself, starting to type and—
Oops.
“Oh shi—“ said Jenna. But then it was too late to do anything about it.
Magic smashed through her reality, replacing it with a new one. A moment later, it had happened, and Jenna —
Jenna was four feet above the ground, hovering in the air.
More like _falling_ through the air.
She was suddenly grateful, for the first time ever, that her apartment had carpets and not hardwood floors.
“Ahhoophh,” said Jenna as she tumbled to the floor.
“You … okay?” said Maya, her tone starting to shift.
“Um,” said Jenna. “I could use some help here.”
“What the fuck am I going to do to help without any fucking—“
Maya stopped short, but Jenna couldn’t tell exactly where she was.
“—Arms,” she finished saying.
“Yeah, um… I’ve got you beat there,” said Jenna, her cheek pressed against the carpet.
“What the fuck happened to your body?”
“I hit enter too early,” said Jenna. “I think all I’d typed was `head`. So now, as we can surmise, that’s all that’s left of me.”
“Well, I think you accomplished that,” said Maya. “How do you … what do you think we need to do? Call Wizard Boy?”
“No I’ll die of embarrassment if you make him help,” said Jenna. “We can fix this, I just need your help.”
“Jenna,” said Maya, carefully crouching down. “I don’t have any arms. I can’t pick you up. I can’t type on your computer. I’m so useless and helpless, that’s the whole point of me.”
“Ugh,” said Jenna, sighing. “You can use your feet.”
“What’s that? You’re allowing me to use my feet? I can break the rules?”
“You may use your feet to help restore me,” said Jenna. “Even though I made a rule that said you can’t use your feet when you’re armless, so that you’ll be more dependent on me.”
“Well it was a well-intentioned rule at least,” said Maya, standing up. She nudged Jenna’s face with her toe, turning her head right side up, then carefully intertwined her toes with Jenna’s hair, and started to lift.
Jenna involuntarily inhaled as she was carried, wondering both how secure of a hold Maya had and also where the air she was sucking in actually was going.
“Okay,” said Jenna, letting out a huge sigh of relief as she was deposited on the table again.
Maya nudged Jenna’s face to face the computer then seated herself next to her.
“Do I have to type with my feet too?”
“Why don’t you use your nose and peck at the keyboard,” suggested Jenna. “It’s not hard to reverse a transformation, we just need to load the original profile and select “Revert.”
“What are you saved as,” said Maya, starting to nose around at the keyboard, then looking at the screen. Oh you must be `dumb_headless_bitch_01`.
“That’s me,” said Jenna.
“It’s not a very good description,” said Maya. “You’re not headless, in fact, your head is the only thing left of you.”
“Well if you want to spent the time renaming a file with your nose, go right ahead,” said Jenna.
“You know what we should do,” said Maya, pausing to look up at the screen. “Is invest in learning how to use the accessibility features of your MacBook.”
“Fair enough, but let’s get this fixed first,” said Jenna.
“Okay,” said Maya. “I think it’s loaded up. Do we need to put the collar back on?”
“No, it’s only for the transformation — reverting can happen without collar, even if someone is elsewhere.”
“Right, sounds just like the WizWorks ‘emergency shutoff’ link they send you.”
“Pretty much,” said Jenna.
“Okay, let’s try it.”
Maya pecked at the enter key with her nose.
Magic whooshed into the room. It happened.
“Uh,” said Jenna. “I don’t think it worked.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Maya, experimentally flexing a bicep. “I think it worked great.”
She stretched her arms theatrically.
“Why did you give yourself arms again? I was going to come in and ravish you!”
“The thing is,” said Maya. “That I’m worked up enough that doesn’t matter here. But you—“
She picked up Jenna’s head from the table.
“You promised me head if I came over.”
She closed the laptop.
“And I intend to collect on that.”
“I just have one question,” said Jenna with a goofy grin.
“What’s that?”
“How many times do I have to get you there before I can have my body back?”
“Hmm,” said Maya, starting towards the bedroom. “Might be a big number.”