Display

A key clattered in the lock of a door leading into a modest living room.  The furniture looked like it has been picked up at garage sales, but otherwise well kept.  When the door swung open, the keys were revealed to belong to a tall 30-something guy in his best (if also slightly worn) going-out-to-dinner clothes.  He gestured grandly to the woman behind him.  “Welcome to my humble abode.”

The woman that ducked easily under his arm and into the room was about his age, with shoulder-length dark blond hair.  She was wearing tight-fitting clothes under her jacket.  The shiny top caught the eye as the jacket came off, but the guy’s gaze soon fell to her legs once again.  They were shapely and well-toned—dancer’s legs.  She spoke up after a moment looking about.  “Not quite what I expected, Jim.”

James chuckled softly as he closed the door behind them.  “How so, Kay?”

Kay grinned back at him.  “Well, it’s tidy, for one.  I guess you were expecting we might end up here, hm?”

“I like to be ready for any eventuality.  Especially ones involving a cute... woman seeing where I live.”

“And... there’s no TV.  Not to mention the oddity of an eight foot tall tree in the corner of the room.  Looks a bit fresh for a leftover Christmas tree.”

James looked at the tree in question, blushed slightly, and quickly grabbed up a digital tablet from the coffee table.  “That’s easily enough remedied.”  Two taps on the touchscreen later, the tree shimmered out of existence, then was replaced by a five foot wide TV screen hanging in midair.

Kay stared at James with an unreadable expression.  “First, how?  Second, why did the trunk of that tree look like a woman?”

James’ blush got a tiny bit warmer.  “Oh you saw that, did you?  Yeah, I... yeah.  That was something my ex and I came up with a couple months back for Christmas.  I liked it so much I kept it as the default for the Display.”

Kay held her gaze on James for a few moments longer, then let the first point slide.  She looked down at the glowing white platform under the TV.  It was an oval the width of the TV, and about 3 feet from front to back.  “Oh!  Is this like the big one in the mall downtown, that they used for that crazy Christmas display?”

James nodded, relieved at the change in focus.  “Yeah, exactly the same thing, just a smaller version.  I work for a company that programs them - we actually did most of the work on that Christmas event.  The schedule was insane, but the bonuses were great.  That’s how I could afford one of these, even wholesale they’re still awfully expensive.”

He held the control tablet out to Kay.  “Here, the controls are pretty intuitive.  That’s where the bulk of our effort goes.  Why don’t you play with it a bit while I hang up our jackets and put some tea on?”

Kay shucked her jacket, revealing more of her silvery top.  She grinned as she watched James’ gaze flicker over it.  “Sounds fun.  Do you have a copy of the mall’s display in here?”

James answered over his shoulder as he was walking toward the kitchen.  “Sure, just look under presets.”

When he returned with steaming mugs of tea in hand, Kay was still playing with the Display’s controls.  A familiar tree was brushing against the ceiling, but it looked as if it had been carved from silver.  “I see you’ve found some of the editing capabilities.”

Kay nodded, absently.  “I was trying to figure out how to make the elves move.  They seemed so alive!”

James laughed as he set Kay’s mug down on the coffee table in front of her.  “That’s because they were.  Nobody has managed to get a Display to produce realistic dynamic motion yet, especially if you want it to interact with the environment.”

Kay stared at him as he sat down beside her.  “But they were only three feet tall!  Were they all kids?”

“No, you can’t have kids work long enough shifts.”  He picked up the control unit and zoomed the image so that only a single elf was on display, at the original height of three feet tall.  The silvering effect Kay had brought up was active on the elves, too.  This one was female, and quite obviously so.  “Besides, it would be pretty inappropriate to make kids look like this...”

Kay nodded, hand absently going to her tea.  She took a sip.  “Then... how?  Telepresence of some sort?”

James shook his head.  “That could be made to work, but it’s... clumsy.  The Display uses a sort of spatial distortion to make its images feel real.  It turns out that it’s way easier to distort a real object than to create something from scratch.”

Kay stared at the silver elf.  “So if I stepped up onto that platform, I’d turn into an elf like that?”

“Not automatically.  But I could from the pad, if you step up.  Want to see what it’s like?”   He kept his tone carefully neutral, almost offhand.

Kay set her tea down, then walked over to the glowing oval.  As she reached out to touch the elf figure, she gasped then pulled back.  “My arm... it turned silver!”  She stared at the restored limb for a moment, then carefully eased her hand back toward the elf.  As it crossed the edge of the oval, silver again shimmered over her skin.  “Cool.”

James smiled, and watched as Kay stepped up into the Display, every move covering more of her in silver.  “You look amazing.”

Kay turned more or less in his direction.  “I wish I could see it.”

“Sorry?”

“The silver covered my eyes.  Can’t see.”   Kay was running her hands over her arms, feeling the slickness of the silvery coating.

James muttered something, then started working with the control pad.  The elf vanished first, so Kay wouldn’t stumble into it.  “I know we did something like this... ah, here we are.  Retain transparency and...”  He looked up.  Kay’s eyes were closed, and she was making a happy murmuring.  After adding one more tweak to the settings, James called out.  “You can open your eyes now.”

Kay gasped as she looked down at herself.  Smooth shiny curves met her eye, all the way to her toes.  “Oh, wow.”  She pirouetted slowly, showing off.  After a moment, something occurred to her.  “Um... where are my clothes?”

“Turned into a skintight suit.  You’re still modest.  Sorta.”

“Hm.”  It was hard to read Kay’s expression through all the reflections.  James took a moment to admire the full effect - smooth silver from head to toe.  He frowned momentarily, and reached for a control just as Kay spoke again.  “Can you do the same to my hair?”

James chuckled.  “Already on it.”  Kay’s silvered hair retreated into her skull.  “And it looks good on you.  You look like a robot.”

“I need a mirror,” Kay requested.  “I have to see the whole effect.”

James just nodded, and dug through the menus on the control pad once more. “Here we are...”  A silvered plane appeared to Kay’s right, and she turned to stare at herself.  Humming softly, she started to dance in place, then slowly pirouette.  James was entranced.

Kay’s dance turned more sensual - she couldn’t help but touch herself, loving the the glassy smooth feeling the silvering effect had created.  She lost track of time, until a sudden tug threatened to throw her off balance.  She tried to take a step to compensate, but her body didn’t follow.  It just kept on dancing as if nothing was wrong.  Kay tried to fight against it, to slow down, to do anything except dance.  She could feel her muscles tense, but nothing changed—still she spun in place, hands roving distractingly over her body...

There was that tug again!  It wasn’t as strong as last time, but it still felt like it should throw her off balance.  She realized with a start (that didn’t affect the dance, of course) that she was dancing the same steps over again.  She was stuck in a loop!

She tried to call out to James, but her mouth had been closed while dancing, and her throat wouldn’t make the right shape either.  The best she could do was to huff and puff, and James didn’t notice.  She could see—during the part of the cycle where she’d given him a big grin—that he was bent over the control pad, doing... something.  He was doing this to her!

Kay fought the confinement, exhausting herself. Worse, trying to breathe hard through her closed mouth proved difficult, and she started to feel a bit dizzy.  She took hold of herself then, forced her breathing to slow, and let herself just move with the dance.  If it wasn’t for that darned twitch every fourth spin she could lose herself in this...  Each time, though, the tug wasn’t as bad, until finally she couldn’t feel it at all.  She just spun on and on in her dance, and truly did lose herself for a time.

“Perfect!” exclaimed James, and suddenly Kay stopped, facing him, mid-grin.  A moment later, she could move again, and nearly collapsed.  She stumbled forward, out of the Display and out of the silvering.  She barely noticed the loss, storming forward to stand above James.

He cringed back into the couch, cowed by the ferocity of her expression.  “Oh no, not again,” he mumbled.

“What the fuck was that?”  Kay’s voice was low and dangerous, her eyes flashing with emotion.

“I...  I...” James stammered.

“You... your gadget turned me into a puppet.  A dancing toy.”  Kay’s voice and expression softened a bit.

James sat forward again.  “You were so beautiful, I had to...”

“Had to what?”

“Turn it into a loop, smoothing the transition until it was seamless.  It’s what I do.”

“With me inside.”

James sighed, and looked away from Kay.  “Yeah, I got... carried away.  I’m sorry.”  He looked back up at her, hopefully.  “Can I make it up to you?  I’ll do anything.”

Kay’s lips slowly curled into a wicked smile.  “Really.  Then get up into that thing, and tell me how this control works.”

James nodded, stood up, and stepped carefully around Kay on his way to the stand.  As he entered, the silvering effect enclosed him, turning him into a hairless, smooth-bodied mannequin.  Kay’s eyes were drawn to his shiny ass, and she had to suppress a giggle when he turned around, showing just what he meant by ‘modest’, earlier.  His private parts were as smooth as a Ken doll’s.

“Tell me how to replay that loop.  With you inside.”

“It’s cued up, just hit the replay butt...” he was cut off as his body was suddenly not his own.

Kay watched in fascination as James’ body was pulled into the dance loop’s starting position, started turning, dancing.  It took her a moment to realize that the dancing form in the Display was female.  She stared in fascination at the silvery female dancer that had been her date, and couldn’t help but smile back at the dancing figure each time it smiled out at her.

After a while she looked down at the pad.  How did she turn this off?  Pause just  turned her... him into a silver statue.  Kay couldn’t help herself, and had to walk over to the statue, and run a hand over it.  “Wow,” she whispered.

Pressing ‘stop’ had the desired effect, releasing James.  He also returned to his normal height and gender, though he was still silvered.  Kay sighed softly.

James smiled at her.  “What’s wrong?”

“I kind of liked having a silver twin.”

James held his hand out for the control pad.  “I’ll set it up.”

As he was tapping away Kay asked, softly.  “Did it hurt?”

“Hm?”

“Being turned into... well, me.”

“Feels a little tingly to be folded like that.  You barely notice it after a couple minutes.”  He handed the control back over to her.  “Press apply to change me.”

“Why?”  She asked, holding the control but not touching the surface.

“Because you asked.”

Kay shook her head.  “Not what I meant.  Why give me this kind of... control.  I turned you into a dancing girl, and you just... let it happen.”

James looked away.  “It... seemed only fair, after...”

Kay puffed out a breath exasperatedly.  “That’s not it.”

James sighed, and looked Kay in the eyes with a guardedly hopeful expression.  “Because you didn’t just up and leave.  You even seemed to enjoy it.  Until I messed up, anyway.”

Kay smiled softly.  “Yeah.  Even then, actually.  I wish you’d kept me paused longer.”

James looked puzzled.  “But you were so angry after...”

Kay’s eyes flashed again.  “You *don’t* do that without consent.  And you *especially* don’t do it without some way to signal if you’re panicking.  I couldn’t speak, and at first it scared the hell out of me.”

James looked at his feet.  “Crap.”

Kay reached out a finger and lifted his chin.  She smiled at the silvery look her hand took on when it crossed into the Display.  “Scary can be good.”

James smiled with relief.  Kay stepped up into the stand, silvering as she went, and pulled his head down into a long, hard kiss.