With reality alteration apps more popular than ever, transformation enthusiasts of all stripes have rallied around the #TFTuesday hashtag. This weekly community celebration is a fun excuse to test the limits of the software, or just get out of a personal shapeshifting rut. When the Reality Writer goes down for some unexpected maintenance however, more than a few users are left in the lurch.

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It turns out FA wasn’t the only service dealing with an outage recently! After joking a bit with folks on Mastodon and Bluesky, I decided to spend the downtime writing a few disrupted #TFTuesday vignettes. Thanks to everyone who replied with concepts to riff off of!

I hope you enjoy this bit of flash fiction. Let me know what you think as always! Alternatively, comment with form what you would have been goofing off as on #TFTuesday when the app went down!

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Reality Writer: Read Only

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April 30th - Whoops! We're back! -Ish

Welcome back to Reality Writer 4.5! You’ll notice that we are in a version of read-only mode with the following limitations:

🚫 All changes, alternations, and adjustments are currently disabled.
🚫 Reality shifts are inaccessible.
🚫 Perception filters are currently locked.
🚫 Copies, duplicates, and backups cannot be edited, restored, or deleted.
🚫 New Account Creation has been disabled.

We apologize for the inconvenience! During recent routine maintenance we encountered an unforeseen feedback loop in our paradox mitigation code. Our dev team and their three new sets of doppelgängers are hard at work root-causing the issue. Out of an abundance of caution, we've temporarily taken our quantum matrix offline as we re-baseline on this current reality.

We currently do not have an estimate for when this space-time scan will be complete. We are actively working as fast as we can. Rest assured, all our user backups are safely saved and can be restored when this maintenance period finishes.

In a bit of lighter news, our engineering team(s) has verified that they'll be able to keep everyone's #TFTuesday streaks going despite the downtime!

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~Tune In~

Dan sat on his bedroom floor in front of an old CRT TV he kept around for retro gaming purposes. For the last few days he had been working to improve his antenna reception to the local public access channel. Their kids entertainment block was just about to start.

He clicked the TV on. The warm glow of the antique television filled the room. After a brief word from their sponsors, the Benny Bunny Comedy Hour began. The titular bipedal cartoon rabbit slowly crept through the animated countryside. The yellow rabbit wasn't wearing anything except for a pair of white gloves. It was a derivative look, but Dan's roommate Ben had never been that original.

"What's hoppin'?" Benny said his tag line at the camera. "You see that pesky farmer anywhere?"

Then the cartoon character leaned really close to the screen. "Hey Danny boy, that gizmo still on the fritz?"

"Hey there Benny." Dan gulped and held up his phone to the old TV set. "Their restore procedures just hit twenty five percent."

"Well boil my carrots!" Benny stomped his foot. "Look uh- How are my ratings doing? You think I'm going to picked up for a second season?"

"Uh- Hard to say," Dan bit his lip. "You know how public broadcast funding can be. But all the online reviews say you're a real fun throw-back for parents!"

"Oh gee, well ain't that swell!" Benny pounded a white glove against the glass of the screen. The television set wobbled back and forth comically on the carpet. "Tell those radish-breath geeks to get me out of here already! Who knows if that thing will work if I'm in re-runs!"

"Uh, it was your idea to climb into the TV Benny," Dan rubbed the back of his neck.

"It was your idea for me to push the gadget's limits and make me a toon!" The rabbit tried and failed to pull his gloves off. The cell shading responded as if he were pinching his skin. "At least tell me I made the Saturday morning cartoon block?"

"Not that I could tell? I think your next episode's on Monday," Dan looked a little squeamish. "But hey, I've got an idea."

"Oohh, wise guy's got an idea!" Benny struck a dramatic hands on his hips pose, "Let's hear it!"

"Well, I went down to the flea market today and found this." He held a large plastic rectangle up to the screen.

"You've got to be pulling my tail." The whites of the rabbit's eyes went twice their usual size.

Dan laughed nervously, "Think we can turn you back from a VHS bootleg?"

"Your guess is as good as mine-" Benny's ears perked. "Oops, farmer's coming, gotta scamper!"

Dan popped the tape into the recorder built into his TV set. He hit the record button just in time for another classic carrot heist.

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~Gone to the Dogs~

"Take out the trash Jack!" "Do the dishes Jack!" "Stop leaving your socks everywhere Jack!" "Don't just lay around all day Jack!" Ugh!

Jack was absolutely done with Richard's nagging. They both evenly split the apartment's chores, and Jack uh- usually got around to them. Richard was so good at washing the dishes too! He had completely forgotten about that one time Jack mowed the lawn.

No matter, this is exactly what the Reality Writer was designed for. Not giving himself a bit more work ethic mind you. It was Jack's day off, he wanted to enjoy lounging around the house without any guilt. It was easy enough to find a solid dog transformation script on the #TFTuesday forums.

German shepherd. Twenty four hour duration. Reality shift. Awareness filter. Jack was really giving it the works. Richard would be completely oblivious to the fact that his pampered pup was in fact his lazy roommate.

Hitting "Apply" on his phone was a surreal process. He tapped the button and watched his smartphone gain a soft plush exterior. The screen became a stitched series of felt icons as the entire gadget turned into a soft chew toy.

Their two bedroom apartment slowly devolved into a one bedroom efficiency suite. Their Blu-Ray collection became Richard's much more modest DVD collection. The general cleanliness of the apartment improved in a matter of moments.

Meanwhile, a bewildered German shepherd simply took everything in. Jack sniffed around his new living space, chewed on some toys, and generally had a blast getting into trouble.

Then he had an odd moment. He was going to chew his roommate's shoe to teach him a lesson, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. His Master had gotten mad at him when he had done that as a puppy. He didn't want to upset him again.

Master? Arf! There he was standing all over Jack! The big human was his owner! Just seeing him made his tail wag.

"Blah blah blah Jacky blah blah walk?" The ear rub felt nice, but uh- What was he saying exactly?

Apparently Jack was a little more dog than he had expected! Not that there was much he could do about it now. It was surprisingly easy to adjust to his new canine lifestyle.

His morning and afternoon walks turned out to be his favorite part of the day. Laying on the sofa and watching TV as Master ate his dinner was a bit of a bust since he couldn't understand anything. Thankfully the belly rubs more than made up for it.

Ugh, speaking of dinner. The kibble was... weird. It was fine. The dog part of him couldn't help but wag as his Master poured the bowl. But he knew he was basically just having meaty cereal for his only two meals of the day. He should have made sure Master was the sort of owner who gave him wet food.

Ah well, all things considered it proved to be a pretty fun day. Jack spun around three times on his new dog bed and dozed off to sleep.

The next morning, he groggily woke up on his dog bed. Wait, his whatnow? Jack stretched his arms out in front of him and arched his back. A pair of black and brown paws came into view.

Arf! He was still a dog! What the!? The stupid app had messed up!

“Arf!” He did his best to get his Master’s attention. His owner wordlessly rolled over in bed and did his best to ignore Jack's early morning outburst.

It was a twenty four hour timer, right? Maybe he just needed to wait a bit longer?

Jack got out of bed and paced the room anxiously. He trotted over to the bedroom’s nightstand to check his phone, only to realize it wasn’t there. Right, it had turned into a plush toy with the rest of the reality changes.

The change timer should still work even if his phone wasn’t real anymore, right? He went over and anxiously poked the toy with his paw. It just squeaked in response.

Uh… had he reality written the Reality Writer out of existence?

It- it probably just needed time. Jack didn’t have the best sense of time anymore, but he knew something was wrong when dinner rolled back around again.

Arf!? Was he stuck as his roommate’s dog!? Surely he just messed up the script somehow. Maybe he double tapped a key and scheduled it for 244 hours? Hopefully not 24 days!

Jack was a resourceful dog. He could get out of this. There was a big patch of sand in the park Master took him to during their walks. He could write some message in the dirt for him to see. Better yet, his owner still had a phone, right? Maybe Jack's wet nose could work the touchscreen?

He walked over to the end table where his Master kept his phone charging. Sure enough, it lit up when Jack nudged it. Perfect! Now he just needed to umm... How did this thing work again?

Jack whined as he stared at the rectangle. None of the shapes on it made sense anymore. He wasn't even sure what the different symbols were trying to convey. Jack knew he should have been able to at least identify a clock or something, but the concepts were hard to form in his canine head. Let alone make sense of. Were those supposed to be... letters?

Arf! Wait a second! He couldn't read! That meant he couldn't write! Jack nudged the apartment's carpet anxiously. He couldn't even think of the shapes to form his own name!

"Come on Jack, enough of that. Let's get you outside," his Master clipped a leash on his collar. He clearly misread Jack's digging at the carpet for needing to go outside. Which was good, because he actually did need to go.

This was humiliating! He was stuck as some dumb dog! Change Co couldn’t just keep him like this, right? Awooo! If he ever got his thumbs back, he was never complaining about chores again!

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~In Plain Sight~

The TFU frat house was in a fervor of activity. Rick and his frat brothers had been early adopters of the Reality Writer. Their usual #TFTuesday themed game of hide and go seek had taken on an uncharacteristic sense of urgency. Trent was hiding somewhere in their frat house with absolutely no way to change back.

Thankfully the Reality Writer's scanning mode still worked in a limited capacity. It was their fallback in case they couldn't find someone by dinner time. Rick himself had won his round of hide and go seek by posing as a pair of batteries in the frat house TV's remote for an afternoon. Unlike that particular outing however, the Reality Writer scanner was currently limited to just a few feet.

Hopefully Trent wasn't hiding somewhere that was really hard to find. There was that time Oscar spent a day as a rat in the air vents gorging himself on french fries. All of Rick's frat brothers were currently running around waving their smartphones at any and every innocuous object in the house.

It had been a few hours however, and nature called. Rick excused himself from the search and slipped into the public restroom off the dining hall. His otherwise preoccupied mind didn't process the fact that there was suddenly additional stall in the restroom. He flipped open the door and slipped inside.

"Boo!" Trent's voice rang out.

The toilet in front of Rick lifted it's seat in amusement. The sound of laughter filled the air as water swished around the bowl.

"Got you!" Trent laughed. "How long did that take? Did I at least beat Paul's record?"

Rick stared openly. His jaw was slack. He slowly zipped his pants back up.

"Okay, but seriously though, this is gross. Go ahead and change me back," the toilet laughed.

"Holy shit." Rick finally spoke. "So... There's been some news in the last couple of hours Trent."

"What kind of news?" The toilet burbled.

Rick leaned out of the stall and shouted, "Guys! Get in here! And bring an out of order sign!"

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May 4th - Status Report!

It turns out there's a lot of space and time! We're currently about 62% completed with our scan! With any luck we should be back online by the start of next week!

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Change Co. will be giving away a free 6 month Reality Writer Pro subscription to all effected parties. We continue to stress that your backups are all safe and sound!

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~Reality Check~

Classroom 10B was filled with its usual hustle and bustle. The gossips were chatting, the jocks were roughhousing, and the nerds were flipping through videos discretely on their phones. A new noise had joined the din however. The small sound clattering plastic, resin, and felt could be faintly hard for anyone listening.

In the corner of the classroom was a small chess board that was currently in the process of playing itself. The pieces stepped across the squares with an increasingly practiced ease. Each of the plastic figures had the distinct appearance of the former students of Classroom 10C.

Going viral online was more difficult than ever. The chess board challenge had been a popular viral hit for #TFTuesday fans. Turn you and your friends into a few chess pieces, act out a quick skit for the camera, and then quickly change back. No one had managed to pull off a full chess board version of the meme just yet though.

The video went off without a hitch, right up until the app went offline. The students of classroom 10C suddenly found themselves limited to their roles on the chess board. They had quite a lot of time on their hands (metaphorically speaking), and they weren't putting it to waste.

"Alright class, back to your staring positions!" Professor White’s voice shouted over the board. Their teacher turned king piece was just as imposing as ever.

"I thought we had you for sure that time!" Mr. Black laughed. Their teacher's aid was holding down the other side of the board as the opposing king. "Now who can tell us where our first mistake was? Any idea Queen’s Bishop? King's Rook?"

"Ugh..." The pawns groaned as they shuffled back into the second row.

"Come now class, just because we're stuck here doesn't mean we can't make the most of it!" The white king watched the board slowly reset itself. "By the time we get back to normal, you'll all be grand masters!"

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~Return To Office~

Just act natural. They got an email giving them a head’s up. Just act natural. Everything was going to be fine. Just act- "Chris?"

"Arf!" Chris let out a loud startled bark. Well, so much for that. "I mean- Hi!"

Mike looked up at his cubical mate. The six foot two accountant was positively dwarfed by the figure in front of him. A seven foot tall gray furred she-wolf in a burgundy dress was towering over him. Dangling from a lanyard was the employee ID of Mike's cubical partner Chris.

"Oh wow." Mike simply blinked. "It is you."

"So uh- Yeah, you probably saw that Reality Writer thing in the news?" Chris found herself talking a bit faster than usual. She was pretty sure it was a nerves thing and not a stuck-as-a-werewolf thing. "I decided to give it a go, and wouldn't you know I'm stuck."

"Huh," Mike looked Chris over. "I fooled around with one of those at a bachelor party last year. Well, bachelorette party by the end of it."

“Really?” That wasn’t the response she was expecting. Chris honestly found herself doing that canine head tilt thing.

"Yeah, we didn't try any tails though. What's that like?" Mike peered around Chris' back curiously. "I had no idea the app could just go offline like that."

"Me neither," Chris timidly wagged her tail. She looked over her shoulder as best she could. "You wear your emotions on your sleeve, that's for sure."

"I can see that," Mike chuckled. He couldn't help but eye the tail hole in Chris' outfit. The dress had a few tailored flaps to give the fluffy tail plenty of space. "You can relax, it's cool."

"Arf!" Chris did her best to flatten the fur on the back of her neck. "I figured you'd be freaking out more."

"In this day and age?" Mike laughed. "People gotta be themselves. Just don't shed on my half of the-"

"Chris!" Her boss waved from down the hall, "I got your email! You have a second?"

"Oh boy, here we go." Chris let out a distressed canine whine. "Wish me luck."

Chris' boss Tom was one of those impossible to read managers. She got her assignments done on time, but it was hard to tell if she was actually doing a good job. Hopefully she wasn't about to get an earful.

She stood across from her manager awkwardly. All the chairs on this floor had closed backs on them. Despite her new stature, Chris still felt like she was about to get a dressing down about appropriate workplace appearances.

"I take it you got swept up in that whole Change Co thing? Pete on the third floor just showed up as a talking cat." He looked up at her. “You’re not going to spend all day chasing him around the office, are you?”

Was... he joking?

"Arf! Of course not Tom!" Chris practically barked the answer out.

"Woah, relax. I was just kidding." Tom laughed. "Although he really is a black cat. Not the two legged kind either. Can you still type?"

He wiggled his hands in the air. Oh boy- Here it was. Mandatory leave until she could be productive again. Working from home until she was presentable.

"Yes? Yes! I made sure to keep my dexterity!" Chris held up her paws. The claws would probably make things interesting, but she had managed alright so far.

"Oh good. You’ve got one up on Pete then. Although I'm sure we could have found something for you to do until IT got the voice-to-text software installed." Tom smiled. "So there's this giant pile of HR documents I'm supposed to read to you. The long and short of it is that our firm's an equal opportunity employer welcoming of all sorts of post-human alternatives. If anyone gives you a hard time while this Reality Writer thing gets sorted out, be sure to let me know, okay?"

"Wait, you mean I’m not in trouble?" Chris blinked a pair of dumbfounded canine eyes.

“No? Why would you be in trouble?” Tom blinked in return.

“I showed up as a werewolf to work!” Chris laughed nervously.

"We’re a modern workplace Chris. As long as you get your work done on time I’m happy." Tom typed on his computer. "Anyways, I just sent you the standard orientation paperwork. It's a lot of new hire stuff you probably already know."

"Thank you sir!" Chris' ears shot up.

"What HR didn't tell me was that we have a few open-backed chairs in storage down the hall. I figured you’d need something to accommodate your tail. Mike’s grabbing one for you now. Let me know if it doesn't work out and I'll let you expense something from the office supply store." Tom said.

"Oh wow, thanks Tom." Chris found her tail starting to speed up.

"Of course." He gave her a friendly smile. "Just let me know if you want to reschedule that presentation you were going to give this Friday. But I know you can handle it."

"Yeah, I should be back up to speed by then." Chris waved and headed back towards her cubical. "Thanks again!"

She strode back to her desk with a surprising spring in her paws. That went way better than she was expecting! Sure enough, Mike was already helping get her desk chair swapped out.

"Good news I take it?" He grinned and pushed the old chair out into the aisle.

Chris plopped down off her hind paws. Man that felt good. It only dawned on her just how much she'd been standing up this morning.

"Yeah! Tom was totally chill about the whole thing." She could feel the tension melt away from his muscles as she finally relaxed.

"I told you people wouldn't care." Mike said slouching down into his own chair.

"Easy for you to say. You didn't get randomly turned into a werewolf on a lark." Chris laughed. It came out a bit like a bark despite her best efforts not to play-growl.

"You didn't either," Mike grinned. “Not randomly I mean.”

"What?" Chris blinked.

"This wasn't some random lark," Mike pointed down around Chris' furry legs. "You showed up to work wearing a tail-friendly business casual dress. No way you had time to buy something like that on short notice."

Chris was thankful blushing was harder to see behind fur. "I may have done this a few times before."

"No surprise there. It suits you. Actually, hang on..." Mike leaned over and typed a few keys on his instant messaging client. A link popped up on Chris' work phone. "...there's the link to request an update to your corporate directory listing. Name, species, pronouns, that sort of thing. You know, just in case you end up liking being taller than me."

"I'll think about it." Chris tapped the link with a paw pad. She didn't even try to hide her wagging tail.

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May 13th - We're back! For real this time!

Reality Writer 4.5 is back online and fully operational! We sincerely apologize for the extended outage. Change Co. is happy to announce that we’re doubling our free Reality Writer Pro subscription offer up to an entire year of service (for any user who haven't signed onto the pending class action lawsuits). If you’re still having trouble restoring your profile or returning to your original reality, please reach out to us to make it right. That’s kind of our whole deal.

For those following along with our dev log, you’ll be happy to know we’re back down to just a single engineering team. Pro Tip: Don’t use Rock Paper Scissors to try and settle doppelgänger disputes. They both always throw the same hand.

We hope the rest of your #TransforMAYtion goes well! We don’t foresee any additional unscheduled downtime. Happy #TFTuesday!

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~Epilogue~

Life returned to normal surprisingly quickly. Timed changes picked up right where they had left off, and true to the company's word, no one had any trouble restoring their backup. If they wanted to.

For every Trent signing onto the class action, there was a Chris who didn't bother restoring their original profile. The common joke for those caught up in the Reality Writer's outage was that it was "a truly transformative experience." Chris eventually did end up submitting the IT form to have her work profile updated. It turns out trouble tickets get closed remarkably quickly when you show up to the help desk as a confident seven foot tall werewolf.

The students of Classroom 10C were too busy with their newfound success on the junior chess circuit to consider raising too much of a fuss. Participants in regional tournaments had come to dread anyone employing their unusual approach of leaning down to get an eye-level view of the chess board. The telltale slouch was a clear indication you were in for a rough match.

Dan managed to get Benny Bunny out of the television right before his show's cancellation. Their reunion lasted all of a five minutes before Benny leapt right back into the screen. What his show really needed was a co-star! This time the toon made sure to jump in with his roommate and the Reality Writer in tow. Critics weren't quite sure what to make of the retooled Benny Bunny and Danny Duck Show. Fans however were absolutely enamored with the slice of life roommate comedy drama staring two paper thin silver age cartoon pastiches. Rumor has it they were already green lit for a second screen.

All in all, Change Co. was doing fairly well after the incident. They clearly believed all press was good press. After a momentary stock plummet, they reached an all time usage record during the next week's #TFTuesday. For as many people had sworn off the app, the ordeal had piqued the interest in twice as many new users. Things were looking brighter than ever.

Even Jack had turned over a new leaf. His humanity had been restored the moment Reality Writer's services came back online. The young man was hard at work scrubbing the night's dishes. He'd learned his lesson and was finally pitching in on his fair share of the household chores.

"Hey Jack! Thanks for finally doing the dishes," Richard waved from the sofa. Even after Jack's restoration, his roommate had been oblivious of the entire event.

"No problem, just doing my part," Jack smiled. He was honestly just happy to have thumbs again. He couldn't believe he was stuck as a dog for two weeks without anyone the wiser! What if he had been stuck like that for even longer!?

"Oh, hey, I meant to mention. My family's coming to town next week. Do you think you could help clean up around the apartment some?" Rick asked.

"...sure." Jack scanned the room. Unfortunately his cluttered had been restored as well.

"Oh, and my sister's got her two kids with her. Any chance you could baby sit while we go out for dinner on Friday?" Richard smiled hopefully.

Jack set down his sponge. Those two toddlers were a handful, and Richard's parents were always so judgmental about his decorating choices. Hmpf.

"Yeah, just let me check my schedule real quick..." Jack ducked around the corner and pulled out his smartphone. Somehow after all he had gone through, Jack still hadn't deleted the Reality Writer app. The script he had gotten stuck in earlier was still sitting right there.

German shepherd. Twenty four hour duration. Reality shift. Awareness filter. The works. Right down to adoring Richard and having a dog's grasp on the world.

Honestly, it sounded a lot better than baby sitting.

Jack nudged the timer up. Another two weeks couldn't hurt, right? Without giving it a second thought, Jack tapped the Apply button.

An energetic German shepherd bounded around the corner and leapt up onto the sofa. It eagerly lapped at his Master's face without a care in the world. Now this was the life.