Chapter 11 - The Changes We Make

What that was, I wasn’t quite sure of. Chewing lightly on some toast and egg along with some random fruit gave me time to simply think before I realized I had deleted one of the experimental deep learning editing apps I messed around with a long time ago.

Out of mild curiosity, I added it back to my phone. It was one of those which required an overpriced, monthly subscription to get anything out of. Fortunately, starting it back up again reset the free trial period. Might be worth a look.

It was a small download at least. Not a lot of useful photographs lived on my phone, before or now. Another curiosity, surely I saved all sorts of cute photos with my parents. Nothing. Not that I preferred to see reality altered again. Traces of the world that comforted me to the fact that I still had tangible threads of sanity. Whatever photos I might find would not be mine anyway but the product of someone else and their reality.

Maggie’s reality. I just got to play in it. For how long? Who knew? But I treasured these moments. I respected them. Yet, I still needed more.

Putting my photos through the digital blender translated into some interesting results. Years ago, at the start of the 2020s, they could show me a lot of things, but the AI was nascent. The options now bedazzled me. It had options for live video hair rendering and all angle feature extrapolation and replacement. Instead of trying to guess eye and face orientation, the system did a quick preview and allowed you to make adjustments.

Non-human and fantasy options had been added for fun. Face track yourself onto a cat and render what kind of feline you might be. The results I'd seen trended towards uncanny horrors. I was interested in how the app could augment what I already had.

It had a lot of work to do before, straining away my flaws. The remarkable thing was how naturally my features sat upon all a variety of templates. It was robot visual magic, but still it impressed me.

The free-flowing world of selfies provided the system with all the information it needed. Naturally, before, I went right for the E+ to G-cup pendulous options. Compensation. Some looked absolutely ridiculous, others were practically perfect. It was through all that, I managed to glean a new sense of self.

Perhaps it bordered on a weird sort of classical narcissism. My face was beautiful though, and only with a few minor tweaks and shifts. The bone structure remained. That gave me a strange allure but never the confidence to act upon it. And so I had a plethora of people like Camille, who only confessed to a heart-palpating crush when it no longer mattered and they had found someone else.

If I had a distilled, manly beauty, knew it and wielded it skillfully, would I ever want to be like this? It was the fundamental question. How crazy am I? Am I just a little bit psychosexually-confused? Do I just want to take the easy route instead of the increasingly difficult path of being a man in society, alone, neglected, and forced into shapes that just felt like the prelude of waste receptacles?

I knew, or rather I was told relentlessly by mother and society, that girls had it worse with labels and shapes of their own. And certain varieties of girls fought each other for the prize at the bottom of the pit. It was an insult to even wield these AI-constructed photos. I knew that, but I was tired of fighting myself along with the invisible, mental police of the world. I just wanted to enjoy this.

What used to take practically hours to tweak into something that could jump across the lifeless valley of strangeness, could be accommodated by the artificial intelligence with a few button presses. Skimming through the options, I plumbed through beautification settings. Didn’t take long before I found what I wanted.

Bust enhancement. Figure shaping. And so on. Fortunately, the photos already taken would be sufficient. However, if I was going to share them without minimally-astute people calling them out, it might be better just to take new ones.

Wandering around the house, I tried to look for a good place where the early morning light spill complimented my features and didn’t do anything weird to the shadowing. One weird photo could wind up with all sorts of unintended errors.

Ultimately, just standing outside in natural light softly edging through the trees seemed like enough. The problem was creating a selfie to my standards. I had to be conscious of where my eyes were looking, I had to be aware of the angle of the camera on the forward facing lens. I had to pull off a sincere smile but one that wasn’t so intense that it made editing my face and other features a pain. As for those other features, I had to think about the options on my top and whether an adventurous neckline might serve the artificial intelligence better than something more conservative.

The AI could also turn my shorts into a snug fit and smooth the way all the anxieties that rested with the tree stump. A hot flash of trying to do everything perfectly and anticipating the results almost made my hands so sweaty that the phone slipped to the pavement. Fortunately, after the first one, it was easy to take so many others in positions, angles, and lighting situations.

When I had to stop because of time, I paired my phone with my laptop and used the combined processing power to speed up and improve the results. It was miraculous.

What would’ve taken a photo-editing artist some unknown amount of time… filled the screen with ease. Redheaded me sitting on the porch bench with light delicately tracing my features and spilling over my cleavage, which had been brought from struggling to reach beyond the smallest bra to deep into the letters.

Other images were similarly complimented without the rounded distortion that used to give this kind of editing away. Rather, my imaginary bust conformed to some sort of digital model inside the system. It was especially nice to see my tight shorts cleave spaces I knew not. And it activated way too much excitement and flush feeling for right before teaching a class.

I managed to work through about a half dozen before I had to stop. The nicest one was still on the bench with me looking so glamorous. I could try to add a little bit of artificial makeup or other tweaks, but that felt like too much. In fact, I emphasized imperfections and freckles.

To put it to rest and also leave my mind spinning in a thousand directions, I created a new account from a throwaway email and posted my image to one of the more adventurous Reddits. There wasn’t more than a moment to title it something silly like “chilling in the hot morning sun” before I had to just walk away and prepare for work.

No one in my class looked any different than yesterday and all the other elements settled into a kind of routine. A lot of the time was spent on writing reflection with some scattered squeaks and screams I needed to clamp down on. At a certain point, we needed to take a break for technical troubles as one of the most attentive students vented about how they hated their webcam.

The last few years were a travesty, a dark mark in human history rolling along like a broken train across a field of lives. Of all the things to change, that would’ve been the first. And, especially, I would’ve changed… Well, I discouraged my students from sinking to the level of fomenting and fermenting debates. Communication, curiosity, and compromise. It didn’t exactly fall into what my employers wanted me to say, but it worked for my classes.

Fortunately, I got away with directing a Carl Jung discussion about the Age of Aquarius and the potential rise of an “Antichrist”, maybe in the AI form sitting on my table. God in and of the machine. Humanity reduced to a mechanism instead of a spirituality. Really fucked up shit. In retrospect, it was playing with fire to even bring it up but how can a class exist unless it makes you feel like you’re about to lose your shit and every anchor of assumption?

Even for me. I learned more about my students in trying to slow down their passion to a manageable level than in a dozen other topics. Even to describe their contradictions would make a judgmental observer bitter and inconsolably angry. It just made me laugh.

And it made me feel bold. I finished the lecture by asking them to remove or add words from the dictionary. The add feature came from a discussion and an argument that more words with greater power were always better than less. Jokingly, for the next week, that word would be banned and/or encouraged for regular discussion. Because of how last week went, we had to pass on banishing or inviting a word in. So I decided we might as well try one of each to make up for it.

"Brabble", discovered by Michael online, was an easy invitee as a word for arguments or squabbles. The widely-derided “problematic“, even with all the changes to my personal reality, was still the biggest target. I gave it a stay of execution since it hadn’t even come up in discussion for a long while. Ultimately, “productive“ got the axe, mainly as a weasel word.

That should’ve concluded my adventurous spirit, but I took the initiative of directing the girls away from tossed rumors that someone was “stuffing their top” behind the camera by inviting them to consider how I might look with “some bowling balls“.

It was just meant to get a quick laugh, but they took it as a devoted challenge. Before long, I knew far too much about a topic I was interested in but which I really didn’t want out like this. Turning it towards the analytical didn’t help, as everyone soon decided it was time to give me fashion advice. One mortifying aspect of teaching which never changed, no matter how you looked.

Since Friday was fast approaching, at least I had the weekend memory resets to save me from this discussion spilling over into the rest of the class. I brought it upon myself, as I always did, by being open and revealing in the ways I really shouldn’t. Maybe another way was better, likely almost any other way would be better, but this was me and the momentary thoughts that spilled out.

Once I was able to wrestle everyone off the screen and all the ideas into one corner, I had time for a long breath and a glance over at my phone. The Reddit app had notifications. People had responded to my image. Naturally, my brain flashed with expectations everyone immediately recognized the trickery in my bust.

Perhaps I was already banned. Not that it mattered with a throwaway. But the random stranger insults and declarations still burned even though I should’ve learned not to give a shit so many years and even decades ago. I didn’t have to look at it and whatever comments I received. But it would just eat me up inside not to know what was said. Fuck.

Did I have an excuse to go out to eat again? I really shouldn’t. The sandwich shop near the Starlight bookstore wasn’t too bad. I could get a foot-long and have it for some other meal as well. Plus, it gave me a reason to return to the store and make especially sure that it wasn’t just the fragment of a dream.

The leftovers from mom and Camille in the fridge did look pretty good though. That could be a kind of supper. I just wanted to make sure my neighborhood books were safe. And, in that setting, I could be as brave as I envisioned myself to be about all the stupid little things.

On the way out, I nearly picked up one of the medical facemasks in a box after getting my purse and keys. They used to be for allergies and were so once again. I flicked one like a slingshot against the box and headed out.

No sign of random thunderstorms or mollified weather greeted me outside, just oppressive heat. The car labored to push out cold air as I rolled down the driveway but made a stop before I got to the road. As expected, someone blasted down the street at absurd speed. I could be leaving in the dead of night or the quiet of morning but someone would attempt to cross my path right at the moment I pulled out. At least that was a constant.

From there, I actually chose to make a left at the market to pass the old park and former bowling alley along with an army reserve station. On the right was the old Mexican restaurant I used to frequent for fish dishes. Slipping by some car repair businesses, I also passed a Drivers Ed class and met up with the recent school that revealed the plaza from yesterday lasting at least as long as Maggie.

Starlight Pages glimmered as the centerpiece with all the magical allure and ornamentation of the day before starkly showing in the summer sun. The parking lot still had a lot of choice spots but the area right along the front had been fully claimed.

One of the quiet joys I felt was to see a treasured bookstore so close to where I lived. It was easy to keep one of these places open in areas like my old college or fancy pants lands by the sea. That meant I would probably have to buy some things at a cost above where I could get them elsewhere, especially online.

The interior had the AC already puffing at a full tilt with a cavernous rumble echoing from the back of the building and carrying through the wall shelves with a slight rattle and ruffle of posters on the right side. Through the forest of books, I noticed there was a different worker than yesterday: A lady with brunette hair similar to what I had before and a slight presence. She turned and picked up a large box.

I idly watched her and soon noticed something abundantly evident. She put my photos from earlier to shame. She had on a cute, dark-silver top with a modest dip and close sleeves. And it looked like she had literally snuck a set of full-sized volleyballs inside. They were eyebrow-raising compared to her otherwise diminutive scale. She was shorter than me and a little bit skinnier, but she had an admirable heft to her arms and legs.

Large, black-rimmed glasses with a tint of pink on the edges enveloped her eyes. Her jeans looked about one size too big on her with a belt done snuggly to keep them up. Funny thing, the clerk from yesterday, the guy who snuck a look at my “boobs”, this girl looked kind of like what I imagined turning him into for fun. Huh…oh… wait, NO WAY!

Couldn’t be. Could it? Did he remember? How can I possibly ask her? If she remembered me from yesterday… Maybe, but then it didn’t matter if she didn’t remember me either. If only I asked for his name. If he had a name tag when I last visited, then I didn’t remember it.

I wanted to pound my head and say that this was a ridiculous line of questioning, but recent events gave me plenty of cause to at least consider it. How crazy did I want to go though?