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Bertha Dreessen adjusted her reflection in the smudged surface of the control panel, tugging lightly at the end of her auburn ponytail. It was neat, pulled back tight, and she gave it a once-over before smoothing her sleeves. Her lab coat—mandatory—was clean and fitted well enough to suggest an eye for detail. Beneath it, a cream blouse tucked into dark green slacks played off subtle flair—her belt was a skinny blush patent leather, and her flats had a faint sheen, toe-tipped in gold. Gold stud earrings and a slim watch added polish. Not flashy, but considered. A whisper of fashionista threaded through her look, just enough to feel intentional.
At eighteen, Bertha had left high school early. She didn’t see the point in finishing when she’d already landed a job at The Changegrounds: Free Trial—a small, suburban branch of a much bigger operation downtown. The real Changegrounds was all glass walls and designer branding. This one was tucked into a forgettable strip mall next to a dry cleaner. But it worked. They offered free one-time alterations, the bait for customers who might return for something permanent. Reality editing wasn’t new anymore, but it was still mysterious—powered by odd-looking crystal shards sealed behind thick panels.
Bertha didn’t claim to understand how it all worked. She just had to make it sound appealing.
A chime rang from the front. She stood, adjusted her coat again, and stepped into the waiting room.
“Welcome to The Changegrounds: Free Trial,” she said, clipboard in hand. “Let me check—Nicolle Taylor and Camille Potts?”
The taller of the two women gave a quick nod. “Yes. That’s us.”
Camille was thirty-three, clearly younger than her cousin but dressed with more edge: dark lipstick, a leather crossbody bag, and a cropped wool jacket over a graphic tee. She looked around the waiting room with faint amusement, as if half-expecting to find cameras hidden in the potted plants.
Bertha turned to Nicolle. Mid-forties, modestly dressed in a pale blue button-down and black jeans. Her hair was blonde, shoulder-length, pulled back with a clip. She wore minimal makeup. A tote bag hung from one shoulder, jangling slightly with every step.
“I’m excited,” Nicolle said, her voice easygoing, a little too loud. “I mean, if it can really do what my friend said it can do, that’s wild. She said she felt like a different person after.”
Bertha offered a brief smile and led them down the corridor. The hallway lights flickered overhead. Nicolle chatted as they walked—about her daughter, about how weird the strip mall parking lot was. Camille mostly stayed quiet, arms crossed, her heeled boots clicking softly.
Inside the Alteration Room, Bertha gestured for Nicolle to step inside the chamber and closed the door behind her. Across the hall, in the Command Room, she brought the system online. The monitors flickered to life. Nicolle’s profile loaded: forty-one, works in sales, one daughter—seventeen, named Judy. Married eighteen years. Pretty average.
Camille peered over Bertha’s shoulder, uninvited. “So… what’s the trick?”
“Trial gives you ten free changes,” Bertha said. “You can use as many or as few as you like. Looks, personality, behavior, even memories. They all hold as long as she’s inside the chamber. Once she’s out, they become permanent unless overwritten.”
Camille cocked a brow. “I told her to try something fun. She’s always in a cardigan. Always.”
Bertha scrolled through the presets and tilted her head. “Alright. Let’s go the other direction.”
Camille squinted. “What do you mean?”
Bertha gave a half-smile. “Let’s try radical normal. Middle-of-the-road. Bland enough to be invisible in a crowd. Hyper-average.”
Camille blinked. “That’s… a thing?”
Bertha tapped in the command: Generic Tier 5 – Median Suburban. Checked boxes for appearance, tone, wardrobe, demeanor. She hit execute.
The chamber shimmered.
When it cleared, Nicolle stood as before—but something had shifted. Her clothes were now a soft taupe cardigan over a pale heather-grey tee, paired with relaxed-fit jeans and nondescript white sneakers. Her hair was neatly flat-ironed, parted off-center in a way that seemed carefully unremarkable. Her expression was neutral, pleasant. Her makeup was so faint it barely existed. Even her tote had changed—now a generic faux-leather shopper with a reusable grocery bag peeking from the top.
She looked like someone you’d pass at a pharmacy and forget two seconds later.
Her posture had softened, too—upright, but not assertive. And when she looked up toward the mirrored surface of the chamber, her face registered the change not with surprise, but with a small nod. Like she’d just remembered something she'd always known.
Bertha smiled faintly. “She’s always worn that cardigan. Favors oatmeal tones. Favorite dinner is chicken and rice. Drives a mid-2000s Camry. Recommends TV shows she heard about from coworkers.”
Memories rewove themselves. Nicolle had a mental catalog of coupons for every store within a three-mile radius. She had strong opinions about dish soap brands. Judy borrowed her mom’s neutral lip gloss for senior photos and once said, fondly, “You’re like... extremely reliable.”
Camille stared. “Wow. I mean. She’s like background music.”
Bertha nodded. “And yet completely content. She blends, supports, facilitates. A living comfort zone.”
Now, Bertha Dreessen didn’t usually override protocol.
The system had guidelines—built-in limitations to keep changes reversible, within ethical boundaries. Anything past Tier 5 required supervisor credentials and, technically, a form signed in triplicate. But this was a Free Trial branch. Downtown hardly checked the logs.
Besides, curiosity was clawing at her.
Nine changes left, she’d said. But what would happen if you didn’t pile on changes—what if you dug deeper instead? What if you pushed normal beyond the edge of relatability?
Camille was still watching the chamber, brow furrowed. “She looks… fine. But she’s not really saying anything. Like she’s buffering.”
Bertha’s fingers hovered over the interface. “That’s because she’s stabilizing,” she said, half-truthfully. “This deep a normalization, identity needs time to rethread.”
Camille gave her a sideways look. “She okay in there?”
Bertha didn’t answer right away. She pulled up the tier menu. Each level past 5 turned more opaque. Tier 6 bore the warning: Do not apply outside supervised transformation protocol. Tier 7 was darker, not even labeled—just a caution symbol and a tooltip that read: Radical Reconstruction. Structural Identity Rewrite.
Bertha hesitated.
Then tapped Tier 7.
The machine whirred, low and uncertain.
Camille stepped back from the glass. “Wait. What’s happening?”
Bertha didn’t respond. She was watching the stream of data start to recompile.
Because this time, it wasn’t just adjusting clothing or posture or memory metadata. This time, the system began deleting—selectively erasing Nicolle’s deeper imprints from the quantum-mnemonic thread that tethered her to her former self. The timeline hiccupped. Digital logs blinked out. Her driver’s license expired and reissued under a different name. Facebook posts vanished. Her maiden name was rewritten as Potts, but the last name wasn’t Taylor anymore—it had changed. She was married. The house she lived in had a different address.
Even Judy—her seventeen-year-old daughter—ceased to exist.
There was no record. No birth. No photos. Camille’s memory shivered. A presence unremembered.
Inside the chamber, Nicolle flickered out of existence.
Then flickered back in.
She looked much the same, but more distilled. Mid-fifties now. Her blonde hair had thinned a bit, softening into a practical lob—neat, chin-brushing, with the ends slightly turned under. There was a stoop to her shoulders that hadn’t been there before. Her clothes were unassuming: a muted windbreaker over a faded sweatshirt advertising a regional credit union. Beige orthopedic flats. A crossbody canvas purse faded from sun and use.
Her eyes were mild and indistinct, like someone lost in the task of picking canned soup.
Camille’s breath hitched. “No,” she said sharply. “No, no—what did you do? That’s not her.”
Bertha stared at the monitor. The new profile had finalized:
Name: Deborah Halpern (née Potts)
Age: 56
Occupation: Retired from state billing office
Spouse: Arnold Halpern, married 31 years
Family: One niece, Camille Potts
Hobbies: Knitting, couponing, low-impact aerobics, online recipe reviews
Car: 2011 beige Toyota Corolla
Favorites: Butterscotch hard candies, gas station coffee, local news at 5
No children. No Judy.
No dramatic arcs. Just quiet, beige normalcy.
Camille stepped toward the glass again, mouth falling open. “She’s—she’s my aunt? You rewrote her into my aunt? That was Nicolle, my cousin, she—” She turned to Bertha, face flushed. “You deleted her whole life. Judy—her daughter—she had a kid, you can’t just—”
Bertha didn’t look away from the screen. “She was rebuilt from a structural template. Too much deviation makes it unstable. To be that radically normal… she had to be made new.”
Camille’s voice cracked. “She’s my cousin. We grew up together. She got me into The Breeders. We used to sneak wine coolers at her parents’ house—how the hell is she my aunt?”
Bertha’s voice was even. “She always has been. You remember holiday brunches. That time she slipped on black ice and fractured her wrist. You were in high school. She brought you lemon bars.”
Camille backed away from the glass like it might hurt her. “No. No, I remember Nicolle. I remember Judy’s braces. I remember how she cried when they lost their dog, the brown one, the—”
She faltered. The dog’s name was gone. So was the memory of Nicolle’s voice, and the smell of her banana bread, and the terrible family vacation in Oregon where they’d both gotten food poisoning and laughed about it.
Inside the chamber, Deborah folded her hands neatly over her purse strap. She wore a wedding ring now—plain, gold, untouched. She glanced at the wall with a calm, slack-jawed serenity.
Bertha’s clipboard dropped lightly onto the desk. “She’ll live a long, undistinguished life,” she said. “People like her don’t burn out. They’re weatherproof.”
Camille was trembling. “I want her back.”
Bertha shook her head. “There’s no ‘back.’ Not from Tier 7.”
Inside the chamber, Deborah blinked and pulled a word search book from her bag. She began circling words without much thought—fruit names, state capitals.
Camille pressed a hand against the glass. “You killed her. You killed her and put… this in her place.”
“She’s not suffering,” Bertha said.
“She’s gone.”
Bertha didn’t reply.
The screen pulsed softly. Deborah Halpern, baseline stable. No conflicts detected. No anomalies. No resistance.
Bertha tapped her pen against the side of the console. “Eight changes left.”
Camille turned, eyes wet with fury and confusion. “Touch her again,” she hissed, “and I’ll smash that panel in with your clipboard.”
Bertha nodded, quietly.
At eighteen, Bertha had left high school early. She didn’t see the point in finishing when she’d already landed a job at The Changegrounds: Free Trial—a small, suburban branch of a much bigger operation downtown. The real Changegrounds was all glass walls and designer branding. This one was tucked into a forgettable strip mall next to a dry cleaner. But it worked. They offered free one-time alterations, the bait for customers who might return for something permanent. Reality editing wasn’t new anymore, but it was still mysterious—powered by odd-looking crystal shards sealed behind thick panels.
Bertha didn’t claim to understand how it all worked. She just had to make it sound appealing.
A chime rang from the front. She stood, adjusted her coat again, and stepped into the waiting room.
“Welcome to The Changegrounds: Free Trial,” she said, clipboard in hand. “Let me check—Nicolle Taylor and Camille Potts?”
The taller of the two women gave a quick nod. “Yes. That’s us.”
Camille was thirty-three, clearly younger than her cousin but dressed with more edge: dark lipstick, a leather crossbody bag, and a cropped wool jacket over a graphic tee. She looked around the waiting room with faint amusement, as if half-expecting to find cameras hidden in the potted plants.
Bertha turned to Nicolle. Mid-forties, modestly dressed in a pale blue button-down and black jeans. Her hair was blonde, shoulder-length, pulled back with a clip. She wore minimal makeup. A tote bag hung from one shoulder, jangling slightly with every step.
“I’m excited,” Nicolle said, her voice easygoing, a little too loud. “I mean, if it can really do what my friend said it can do, that’s wild. She said she felt like a different person after.”
Bertha offered a brief smile and led them down the corridor. The hallway lights flickered overhead. Nicolle chatted as they walked—about her daughter, about how weird the strip mall parking lot was. Camille mostly stayed quiet, arms crossed, her heeled boots clicking softly.
Inside the Alteration Room, Bertha gestured for Nicolle to step inside the chamber and closed the door behind her. Across the hall, in the Command Room, she brought the system online. The monitors flickered to life. Nicolle’s profile loaded: forty-one, works in sales, one daughter—seventeen, named Judy. Married eighteen years. Pretty average.
Camille peered over Bertha’s shoulder, uninvited. “So… what’s the trick?”
“Trial gives you ten free changes,” Bertha said. “You can use as many or as few as you like. Looks, personality, behavior, even memories. They all hold as long as she’s inside the chamber. Once she’s out, they become permanent unless overwritten.”
Camille cocked a brow. “I told her to try something fun. She’s always in a cardigan. Always.”
Bertha scrolled through the presets and tilted her head. “Alright. Let’s go the other direction.”
Camille squinted. “What do you mean?”
Bertha gave a half-smile. “Let’s try radical normal. Middle-of-the-road. Bland enough to be invisible in a crowd. Hyper-average.”
Camille blinked. “That’s… a thing?”
Bertha tapped in the command: Generic Tier 5 – Median Suburban. Checked boxes for appearance, tone, wardrobe, demeanor. She hit execute.
The chamber shimmered.
When it cleared, Nicolle stood as before—but something had shifted. Her clothes were now a soft taupe cardigan over a pale heather-grey tee, paired with relaxed-fit jeans and nondescript white sneakers. Her hair was neatly flat-ironed, parted off-center in a way that seemed carefully unremarkable. Her expression was neutral, pleasant. Her makeup was so faint it barely existed. Even her tote had changed—now a generic faux-leather shopper with a reusable grocery bag peeking from the top.
She looked like someone you’d pass at a pharmacy and forget two seconds later.
Her posture had softened, too—upright, but not assertive. And when she looked up toward the mirrored surface of the chamber, her face registered the change not with surprise, but with a small nod. Like she’d just remembered something she'd always known.
Bertha smiled faintly. “She’s always worn that cardigan. Favors oatmeal tones. Favorite dinner is chicken and rice. Drives a mid-2000s Camry. Recommends TV shows she heard about from coworkers.”
Memories rewove themselves. Nicolle had a mental catalog of coupons for every store within a three-mile radius. She had strong opinions about dish soap brands. Judy borrowed her mom’s neutral lip gloss for senior photos and once said, fondly, “You’re like... extremely reliable.”
Camille stared. “Wow. I mean. She’s like background music.”
Bertha nodded. “And yet completely content. She blends, supports, facilitates. A living comfort zone.”
Now, Bertha Dreessen didn’t usually override protocol.
The system had guidelines—built-in limitations to keep changes reversible, within ethical boundaries. Anything past Tier 5 required supervisor credentials and, technically, a form signed in triplicate. But this was a Free Trial branch. Downtown hardly checked the logs.
Besides, curiosity was clawing at her.
Nine changes left, she’d said. But what would happen if you didn’t pile on changes—what if you dug deeper instead? What if you pushed normal beyond the edge of relatability?
Camille was still watching the chamber, brow furrowed. “She looks… fine. But she’s not really saying anything. Like she’s buffering.”
Bertha’s fingers hovered over the interface. “That’s because she’s stabilizing,” she said, half-truthfully. “This deep a normalization, identity needs time to rethread.”
Camille gave her a sideways look. “She okay in there?”
Bertha didn’t answer right away. She pulled up the tier menu. Each level past 5 turned more opaque. Tier 6 bore the warning: Do not apply outside supervised transformation protocol. Tier 7 was darker, not even labeled—just a caution symbol and a tooltip that read: Radical Reconstruction. Structural Identity Rewrite.
Bertha hesitated.
Then tapped Tier 7.
The machine whirred, low and uncertain.
Camille stepped back from the glass. “Wait. What’s happening?”
Bertha didn’t respond. She was watching the stream of data start to recompile.
Because this time, it wasn’t just adjusting clothing or posture or memory metadata. This time, the system began deleting—selectively erasing Nicolle’s deeper imprints from the quantum-mnemonic thread that tethered her to her former self. The timeline hiccupped. Digital logs blinked out. Her driver’s license expired and reissued under a different name. Facebook posts vanished. Her maiden name was rewritten as Potts, but the last name wasn’t Taylor anymore—it had changed. She was married. The house she lived in had a different address.
Even Judy—her seventeen-year-old daughter—ceased to exist.
There was no record. No birth. No photos. Camille’s memory shivered. A presence unremembered.
Inside the chamber, Nicolle flickered out of existence.
Then flickered back in.
She looked much the same, but more distilled. Mid-fifties now. Her blonde hair had thinned a bit, softening into a practical lob—neat, chin-brushing, with the ends slightly turned under. There was a stoop to her shoulders that hadn’t been there before. Her clothes were unassuming: a muted windbreaker over a faded sweatshirt advertising a regional credit union. Beige orthopedic flats. A crossbody canvas purse faded from sun and use.
Her eyes were mild and indistinct, like someone lost in the task of picking canned soup.
Camille’s breath hitched. “No,” she said sharply. “No, no—what did you do? That’s not her.”
Bertha stared at the monitor. The new profile had finalized:
Name: Deborah Halpern (née Potts)
Age: 56
Occupation: Retired from state billing office
Spouse: Arnold Halpern, married 31 years
Family: One niece, Camille Potts
Hobbies: Knitting, couponing, low-impact aerobics, online recipe reviews
Car: 2011 beige Toyota Corolla
Favorites: Butterscotch hard candies, gas station coffee, local news at 5
No children. No Judy.
No dramatic arcs. Just quiet, beige normalcy.
Camille stepped toward the glass again, mouth falling open. “She’s—she’s my aunt? You rewrote her into my aunt? That was Nicolle, my cousin, she—” She turned to Bertha, face flushed. “You deleted her whole life. Judy—her daughter—she had a kid, you can’t just—”
Bertha didn’t look away from the screen. “She was rebuilt from a structural template. Too much deviation makes it unstable. To be that radically normal… she had to be made new.”
Camille’s voice cracked. “She’s my cousin. We grew up together. She got me into The Breeders. We used to sneak wine coolers at her parents’ house—how the hell is she my aunt?”
Bertha’s voice was even. “She always has been. You remember holiday brunches. That time she slipped on black ice and fractured her wrist. You were in high school. She brought you lemon bars.”
Camille backed away from the glass like it might hurt her. “No. No, I remember Nicolle. I remember Judy’s braces. I remember how she cried when they lost their dog, the brown one, the—”
She faltered. The dog’s name was gone. So was the memory of Nicolle’s voice, and the smell of her banana bread, and the terrible family vacation in Oregon where they’d both gotten food poisoning and laughed about it.
Inside the chamber, Deborah folded her hands neatly over her purse strap. She wore a wedding ring now—plain, gold, untouched. She glanced at the wall with a calm, slack-jawed serenity.
Bertha’s clipboard dropped lightly onto the desk. “She’ll live a long, undistinguished life,” she said. “People like her don’t burn out. They’re weatherproof.”
Camille was trembling. “I want her back.”
Bertha shook her head. “There’s no ‘back.’ Not from Tier 7.”
Inside the chamber, Deborah blinked and pulled a word search book from her bag. She began circling words without much thought—fruit names, state capitals.
Camille pressed a hand against the glass. “You killed her. You killed her and put… this in her place.”
“She’s not suffering,” Bertha said.
“She’s gone.”
Bertha didn’t reply.
The screen pulsed softly. Deborah Halpern, baseline stable. No conflicts detected. No anomalies. No resistance.
Bertha tapped her pen against the side of the console. “Eight changes left.”
Camille turned, eyes wet with fury and confusion. “Touch her again,” she hissed, “and I’ll smash that panel in with your clipboard.”
Bertha nodded, quietly.
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